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Class / / /' S^'^^' tJ 
Book_ 



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Copyright }1°. 



COPyRIGHT DEPOSrr. 



Robert Louis Stevenson 
in California 




ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 



Robert Louis Stevenson 
in California 

By 

Katharine D. Osbourne 

With Sixty-nine Illustrations 




Chicago 
A, C. McClurg & Co, 

ipii 






Copyright 

A. C. McClurg & Co. 

1911 



Published, December, 1911 



Entered at Stationers' Hall, London, England 



THE • PLIMPTON • PRESS 

[ W- D- O ] 
NORWOOD • MASS • U • S • A 



t,0 

ICI.A305420 
NO. \ 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

Robert Louis Stevenson Frontispiece ^ 



FACING 
FAGB 



Carmel Bay \^ 

Pines at Monterey 1 ^ 

Cypress Trees, Monterey 3 "^ 

A Bit of Monterey Coast 3 

Midway Point, Monterey Coast 4 «^ 

Gull Rock, Monterey 4 •/ 

House in which Robert Louis Stevenson Roomed, 

Monterey 7 '^ 

The Hall of Records in House of the Winds, Monterey 7 1^ 

Sunset, near Witch Cypress, Monterey 10 ^ 

Cypress Point, Monterey 10 v^ 

The Coast, near the Pacific Camp Grounds . ... 13 «^ 

Old Cypress Tree 13 «^ 

The First Theater in California 14 ^ 

View of the Town of Monterey 14 V' 

Jules Simoneau 16 k 

Drawn from Life by Theodore J. Keane 

Washington Hotel, Monterey 18 *^ 

Chinese Fishing Village, Monterey Bay 18 v^ 

Jules Simoneau 21 v 

Of Monterey 

Bay and Sand Dunes, Monterey 22 v 

Point Pinos Light House 22 

[v] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAGE 

Custom House, Monterey 27 ' 

The Valley of Carmel and the Old Mission Church . 27 - 

A Forest Walk, Monterey 28 ^■ 

/ 

Carmel Mission 31 1/ 

As Stevenson Knew it before it was Restored 

Waves on Monterey Coast 32 

Monterey Cypress Trees 32 ^ 

The Carsons' House 34 l^ 

No. 608 Bush Street, San Francisco 

Mrs. Mary Carson, with Stevenson's Step-Grandchil- 
dren 39 

The Carson Children 42 * 

A Picture Taken for Stevensort 

Mr. Carson 42 ^^ 

Robert Louis Stevenson 47 ^ 

Taken shortly before he Left Scotland for California 

Robert Louis Stevenson 47 ' 

Taken in San Francisco, 1880 

Robert Louis Stevenson 49 

A Picture never before Published 

Approach to San Francisco 51 

The Narrows, San Francisco 51 

Judge John H. Boalt 62 '/ 

Of San Francisco 

Thomas Wilkinson 62 

Of Oakland 

Tamalpais 66 

Another View of Tamalpais 66 ^ 

Studio in California Art School, 1879 69 ' 

Stevenson's Last View of San Francisco .... 76 ^ 
In the Track of the San Francisco-Oakland Ferry- 

Boats 76 </ 

Woods, near St. Helena 79 \/ 

Woods, on the Way to Silverado 79^ 

Williams' Ranch, St. Helena 81 M 

[vi] 



ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 
PAQB3 

Toll House, Silverado 81 V' 

On the Way to Silverado 82 "* 

Mount Saint Helena 85 • 

Near View of Mount Saint Helena 85 •"' 

Toll Gate and Inn at Silverado, Mount Saint Helena . 86*^ 

Mount Tamalpais 86*' 

The Tunnel at Silverado 91 -^ 

Used by Stevenson for a Wine Cellar 

Railway from the Tunnels to the Chute, Silverado . 91 - 

The Shafts, Silverado 92 i- 

The Blacksmith's Forge, Silverado 92^^ 

Madrona and Manzanita Trees 95 

In the Woods, near Silverado 95 

Sea Fog Filling Napa Valley 96 

French Residence of Stevenson 99 '^ 

Whence he Despatched his Letter to Simoneau and Finished 
" Silverado Squatters " 

Vu-gil Williams 101 

Dr. W. Bamford 101 v 

East Oakland 
Stevenson's Monument, Portsmouth Square, San 

Francisco 108 



[vii] 




CARMEL BAY 



PINES AT MONTEREY 




Robert Louis Stevenson 
in California 

HE wide fame of 
California comes 
not altogether 
from her natural 
benefits. As 
much as in these 
her glory rests in 
her heroes. But, 
peculiarly, they were not born on the 
soil, — are not the products of the 
poetry, the spirit, and the occasion of 
the West Coast, but were attracted from 
other lands. The explanation is obvi- 
ous: lack of time, lack of generations 
since the occupation other than by the 
aboriginal Indians and the scattered 
Spanish settlers. We have yet to look 
to native sons and daughters for native 
genius. 

But of all the borrowed heroes since 
Drake and the Franciscan friars, per- 

[1] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

haps not another has brought more 
honor to Cahfornia than Robert Louis 
Stevenson. He came and went and 
found no home in this new Western 
country. From his coming till his going 
was less than a twelvemonth. He 
visited few parts of the State, only 
Monterey, San Francisco, and the slopes 
of Mount Saint Helena. The Sierras 
and the Sacramento Valley were seen 
by him from a railway car window, and 
the San Francisco Bay from the ferry- 
boat. Yet this cursory visit of less than 
a year in time has made Stevenson sin- 
gularly Californian. It has come to be 
that these facts of Stevenson's abodes 
stand out above all others: that his boy- 
hood was passed in Scotland, where he 
was born; that he lived the last years of 
his life in the South Sea; and that he 
spent some while in California. 

This prominence given to his Cali- 
fornia sojourn is due chiefly to three 
reasons: that his motive in coming was 
after a piece of knight-errantry; that 
[2] 




CYPRESS TREES, MONTEREY 



1 


•■-^' '-y^^m^. 


A 


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A BIT OF MONTEREY COAST 



IN CALIFORNIA 

his experiences were exceptional; and 
that subsequently he used his knowledge 
of California in some of his best books. 
With what eyes did he see! With what 
a pen did he write! And it was the 
peculiarity of his art that he communi- 
cated through it to his readers something 
of the personal charm and fascination he 
exercised over those who knew him, so 
that for the countless lovers of Stevenson 
in every corner of the world this great 
Pacific State has a new meaning, and 
every scene familiar to him is endowed 
with an interest both tender and ro- 
mantic. Truly, California was never 
more fortunate in an adopted son, who 
both enhanced and spread abroad her 
honor. 

For Stevenson himself his coming to 
California was one of the most vital and 
decisive steps in his life. It marked 
the dividing line between a reckless, 
intense, but indulgent youth and a deep 
and sincere manhood. 

We will not judge too harshly his 
[3] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

early vagaries and indiscretions. As 
much as they were the result of the hot 
blood of youth and wayward companions 
they were also caused, as he said of 
Burns, "from being formed for love; he 
had passion, tenderness, and a singular 
bent in the direction; he could foresee, 
with the intuition of an artist, what love 
ought to be, and he could not conceive a 
worthy life without it; he was greedy 
after every shadow of the true divinity." 
The tempestuous, intense, betraying tem- 
perament of the artist and lover and the 
generous, noble leanings of the man 
were for long conflicting elements in his 
character. 

What it was that drew those forces 
into one where they no longer opposed 
but served each other; what special 
circumstances aroused all his latent con- 
scientiousness and sincerity and deter- 
mined him to pursue no longer broken 
ends but one great comprehensive pur- 
pose in which soul and body united, is 
not one of the confidences he has seen fit 
[4] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

to make us, even if he knew himself. It 
may have been, as he described another 
change in his Hfe, — from idleness to 
industry: "I was never conscious of a 
struggle, nor registered a vow, nor seem- 
ingly had anything personally to do with 
the matter. I came about like a well- 
handled ship. There stood at the wheel 
that unknown steersman whom we call 
God." What we do know is that this 
wild journey from Scotland to California 
was evidence of the change. 

In later days, in retrospect viewing 
some acts of his life, he sorrowfully called 
himself Don Quixote. His proposed 
journey to America was at that time 
regarded by the friends in his confidence 
in that light, but it was sublime. 

In poor health he set out, and with little 
money in his pocket, and small prospects 
of more, since he had voluntarily cut 
himself off from the allowance which his 
father had always made him, by this 
step contrary to his father's wishes. 
Neither had he any great reputation as 
[5] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

yet in his chosen profession of letters, 
nor had he an assured publisher. His 
heart was heavy with the knowledge of 
the sorrow he was causing his devoted 
parents, whose only offspring he was, 
and whom he himself loved dearly; but 
he saw no other way than to involve them 
in his decision. Yet through all, his 
heart never quailed. Worn out with the 
discomforts of the voyage in the steer- 
age and the days in an emigrant train, 
''his body all to whistles," as he styled 
it, made melancholy by his sordid sur- 
roundings and the dreary country through 
which he was carried, he still was sus- 
tained by the conviction, "I am doing 
right." "Our journey is through ghostly 
desert, sagebrush and alkali, and rocks 
without form and color, a sad corner of 
the world. We are going along Bitter 
Creek just now, a place infamous in the 
history of emigration, a place I shall 
remember myself among the blackest." 
And yet he had but one explanation in 
his letter to a friend. "I am doing right. 
[6] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

I know no one will think so, and don't 



care." 



" Thin-legged and chested, slight unspeak- 
able. 
Neat-footed, artist-handed — all his face 
Lean, high-boned, curved of nose, and 
quick with race, 
The brown eyes glittering with vivacity, 

" Bold-lipped, rich-tinted, changeful as the 
sea. 
Is instinct with a bright romantic grace 
Intense, wild, delicate — with a subtile 
trace 
Of feminine force and fitful energy, 

" Valiant in velvet, light in ragged luck. 
Most vain, most sensitive, keenly criti- 
cal. 
Buffoon and poet, lover and sensualist: 
Of Bottom take a little, much of Puck, 
More Cleopatra, Hamlet most of all. 
Combine, restrain, release, and — have 
we missed?'' 

Inadequate indeed! And the lack 
W. E. Henley, the author of this picture 
of Stevenson in his twenties, tried to 
[7] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

rectify later by remodelling his verses as 
they were finally printed, and by adding 
"Shorter Catechist," but that were far 
from suflBcient portrayal for the mature 
man. 

Stevenson was always a wanderer. 
When his mother once expostulated with 
him, he laughingly responded, "You 
should not have had a tramp for a son." 
He was fond of vagabond journeys, and 
as often as opportunity permitted, he 
indulged his gypsy propensities, for nov- 
elty, for reckless gayety, for experiences, 
and to learn new sides of life. Or 
often it was to escape from himself and 
the demon hauntings of a too active 
mind that knew no appeasement, that he 
went on long walking tours, voyaged in a 
yacht, or travelled with a donkey. And 
that characteristic which we spoke of 
at first was a cause of some of these 
migrations ; for with all Stevenson's great 
capacity for love, and with his heart ever 
ready to bestow it, he seems not to have 
inspired with a like devotion the young 
[8] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

women he admired. "That they cared 
not for him, for the flesh on his bones," 
was the way he bitterly put it. 

His first love was a fiasco. The young 
lady would not take him seriously, made 
light of his protestations, but did what 
she could to break his heart. And he 
told a friend in California that even 
then, years after, he could not bear to 
think on that time. The second affair 
was still more serious and even less for- 
tunate, for it continued over the years 
in which, if his heart had been free, he in 
all probabihty would have had it engaged 
in a more happy venture. The lady 
yielded to his devotion, pleased and 
flattered probably by so much ardent 
and sincere passion on the part of one who 
already began to give evidence of his 
unusual intellectual endowments, if not 
of his genius; but at last she changed 
for another attachment, which left young 
Stevenson bereft in heart, '* caring not 
whether he lived or died." 

Thus, twice, change and travel were the 
[9] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

antidotes he applied to his wounded and 
tortured affections. The Inland Voyage 
was one of these; and it is worthy of 
notice that with all its confessions, of the 
tormented state of his heart there is not 
the least intimation. But then Steven- 
son himself has said, "I believe that liter- 
ature should give joy"; and he held that 
a dispirited word was a crime against 
mankind. 

A third deep attachment followed 
quickly on the failure of the second. 
Quoting once more from Stevenson's 
essay on Burns, we may find the reason. 
"It is perhaps one of the most touching 
things in human nature, as it is a com- 
monplace of psychology, that when a 
man has just lost hope or confidence in 
one love, he is then most eager to find 
and lean upon another. The universe 
could not be yet exhausted; there must 
be hope and love waiting for him some- 
where." 

Going to join some painter friends in 
a small village, called Gretz, lying just 
[10] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

outside the Forest of Fontainebleau, in 
France, a place frequented in summer 
by artist students from Paris, Stevenson, 
fresh from his Inland Voyage, met an 
American lady, Mrs. Osbourne, for whom 
he conceived a warm regard from the 
first, and a knightly interest on account 
of some unfortunate circumstances in 
her life. The friendship was maintained 
throughout the rest of the lady's visit 
abroad. In Paris, at Gretz again, and 
in London they continued to see each 
other until her departure with her chil- 
dren for her home in California. 

But this was not to be the end. Sepa- 
ration did not bring forgetfulness. 
Nearly a year afterward, on receiving 
an appeal by cable from Mrs. Osbourne, 
he did not hesitate for an instant to 
hasten to her side. Stevenson's chivalry 
toward all women was infinite, and his 
heart was always full of sympathy for 
their unequal position. Exhibitions of 
vanity and meanness in men's relations 
to women, witnessed all too frequently, 

111] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

drew from him vehement indignation 
and pity. 

An exalted sense of fidelity was now 
drawing him westward. With no word 
to his parents about his going, in the 
early part of August, 1879, and in the 
twenty-ninth year of his age, he departed 
from Edinburgh bound for the far-away 
and unknown Western world. 

In this volume we are not to concern 
ourselves with the whole journey, but 
for the fuller understanding of the Cali- 
fornia episode we must take up the tale 
just before his arrival. There can be 
no adequate notion of the green, fruitful 
slopes of the Pacific Coast without set- 
ting them in mind against the vast and 
terrible rocky wilderness that lies behind 
the Sierras. The long journey through 
waste plains, without a tree, without a 
patch of sward, nothing but sage brush, 
eternal sage brush, through amorphous 
mountains without a commanding peak, 
masses of tumbled boulders, and for 
color, gray verging toward brown, gray 
[12] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

verging toward black, is greatly dispirit- 
ing. His words make our hearts leap 
as did his own on the occasion, as he 
depicts the leaving behind of the un- 
sightly desert and the sudden shifting of 
the scene as the train of the Central 
Pacific Railway shot out from the sterile 
canons of Emigrant Pass and began its 
plunge down the seaward slopes of the 
Sierras, — a picture of color, freshness, 
and loveliness. 

In his book which describes the whole 
journey, "Across the Plains," and in his 
letters to his friends he dwells upon the 
theme. And memory rejoices to recall 
each new feature which greeted his eye 
as the train wound its way downward 
into the valley of the Sacramento River, 
— sweeps of forest dropping thousands 
of feet toward the far sea level, spires 
of pines along the sky line, the cascades 
and trouty pools of a mountain river. 
Blue Canon, Alta, Dutch Flat, and all 
the old mining camps, and hillsides of 
orchards and vineyards. Finally, set in 
[13] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

a plain of wheat fields, the garden city 
of Sacramento was reached and later 
Oakland, beside the blue expanse of San 
Francisco Bay. It was early morning 
when Stevenson crossed the bay on the 
ferry-boat. The sun was just beginning 
to gild the head and spread itself over 
the shapely shoulders of Tamalpais, the 
unweary sentry at the Golden Gate. 
And the sea fog, opalescent in the morn- 
ing sunshine, rose over the citied hills of 
San Francisco. 

Nine years afterward, when in the 
trading schooner Equator, on his way to 
the Gilbert Islands in the Pacific, when 
he began "The Wrecker," his mind went 
back again to the same scenes and he 
brought his hero by the same way and 
described again his own first golden 
glimpse of California. 

Throughout his travelling he had been 
suffering in his health from his usual 
complaint, weak lungs, and he had gotten 
at a way-side eating place some food that 
acted on him like poison. That he had 
[14] 



4 




'yi 



V; 

M 



_.a 



IN CALIFORNIA 

been able to complete the journey, that 
he had not fallen by the way, was due to 
sheer force of will. He did not stop 
longer in San Francisco than to get his 
train for Monterey where Mrs. Osbourne 
was at that time staying and awaiting 
his coming. He collapsed utterly on his 
arrival there. Open air was always his 
remedy in illness and now he thought to 
try it again. After seeing Mrs. Osbourne 
he took a horse and went on eighteen 
miles farther to an Angora goat ranch 
in the Santa Lucia Mountains. 

Of the owners of the ranch one was 
Captain Smith, an old man, a great bear- 
hunter, who had been in the Mexican 
wars; the other was a pilgrim who had 
been out with the Bear Flag under 
Fremont when California was taken by 
the States, — men of action and adven- 
ture much after Stevenson's own heart. 

In the first days he camped alone out 
under a tree. He was terribly ill, dan- 
gerously so. He could do nothing but 
fetch water for himself and his horse, 
[15] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

light a fire, and make coffee. After four 
days, Captain Smith happened round 
where he was, and finding Stevenson 
and pronouncing him " real " sick, took 
him to his house, where, together with 
his partner, he tended him with true 
frontier hospitahty and kindness, pre- 
scribing homely remedies and treatment. 

Captain Smith's wife was away from 
home, but there were the children with 
their father. When Stevenson was better 
he showed his appreciation of their good- 
ness to him in such way as he could, 
by giving the children reading lessons. 
And since Stevenson was one of the most 
beautiful readers himself, it may be hoped 
that they were helped to an accomplish- 
ment with which Stevenson frequently 
delighted his family circle. After three 
weeks he was sufficiently revived in 
health to return to Monterey. 

His money was already nearly ex- 
hausted. He did not know of an 
amount which at the time lay in the 
New York post-office, sent by his father 
[16] 




JULES SIMON EAU 

D r a ic n from Life hij Theodore J. 
K e a u e 



IN CALIFORNIA 

and mother on finding that he had 
started to America, without leaving an 
address. They despatched it to him to 
the general dehvery of New York City, 
in hopes that he might call there for 
his mail. 

He found in the large adobe house of 
Dr. Heintz, a Frenchman, upstairs, in 
the ell, two airy rooms with five windows 
opening on a balcony. The rooms were 
barely furnished, but it seems that there 
was even more furniture than Stevenson 
wanted; for he did not occupy the bed, 
but slept on the floor in camp blankets. 
For his meals he went to a little restau- 
rant kept also by a Frenchman, M. Jules 
Simoneau. It was a humble affair: a 
small wine room in front and a dining- 
room behind. In the little whitewashed 
back room where the table was spread, 
there were daily gathered with Stevenson, 
Francis, the baker, Augustin Dutra, an 
Italian fisherman, and Simoneau himself; 
and now and then a rancher from the 
mountains, staying in town over night, 
[17] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

joined them. They were waited on by a 
kind, quiet Mazatlan Indian woman who 
was Simoneau's sole helper in his business. 

The matter of a place to lodge and 
board having been settled, Stevenson set 
himself down to the serious matter of 
writing. He began first of all to pre- 
pare for publication the notes he had 
made on the steamship Devonia, in which 
he had come across the Atlantic, thus 
beginning '*The Amateur Emigrant." 

After this, he partly wrote a novel, 
which was later given up, deemed by 
him of little merit. It may have sunk 
under the burden of its long and pompous 
title, "A Chapter in the Experiences of 
Arizona Breckonridge; or, A Vendetta of 
the West." Had this work ever been 
completed it is safe to conjecture it would 
not have been thus finally christened. 

"The Pavilion on the Links" was 
written in Monterey; also, the essays on 
Thoreau and the Japanese reformer Yo- 
shida Torajiro. ''Prince Otto" was 
planned, to be completed much later, 
[18] 



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IN CALIFORNIA 

after he had returned to Europe, and he 
made copious notes for "The Old Pacific 
Capital." 

What delighted Stevenson in Monterey 
was its climate, its situation, and its Old 
World flavor in this new land; "its pines 
and sand and distant hills, and a bay all 
filled with real water from the Pacific." 
Its small population he laughingly desig- 
nated as "about that of a dissenting 
chapel on a wet Sunday in a strong 
Church neighborhood." And the people 
he said were "mostly Mexican and 
Indian — mixed." 

It was here in this lovely village of 
Monterey, the air ever pervaded with 
the eternal roaring of the surf of the 
ocean, a background of pine-grown hills, 
the valley of the Carmel near by, and 
the old Mission church. Point Labos, 
and rocks and inlets and cypresses, that 
Stevenson conceived a great love for the 
Pacific. Later it led him to turn his 
back forever on his inclement native 
land and spend all the last years of his 
[19] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

life on its bosom, rocked in small sea- 
going vessels, or on some of its tiny 
islands. 

Stevenson's great friend in Monterey- 
was Jules Simoneau, who kept the restau- 
rant. He was a man of unusual intelli- 
gence, much of a philosopher, and, like all 
his countrymen, appreciative of beauty 
and art. No better adviser had the 
young art students that congregated in 
Monterey than he, and from none did 
they receive more wise and stimulating 
counsel. It happened in later days that 
Simoneau came to be a sort of oracle 
among the artists, and their sentimental 
interest in him was increased by his old 
friendship with Stevenson. 

Simoneau missed Stevenson one day 
from the restaurant, and the next, and the 
third day. As he had said nothing about 
going out of town, Simoneau became 
alarmed. He went round to his rooms, 
but found the door locked. A handful 
of pebbles from the walk thrown against 
the panes brought Stevenson to the 
[20] 



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JULES SIMONEAU 

Of Monterey 



IN CALIFORNIA 

window, but he showed the face of a 
very sick man. 

Simoneau constituted himself sick- 
nurse at once. He tended Stevenson 
with great care, brought his meals to his 
room, and, knowing his shortness of 
money, opened his poor purse to him 
to the extent of all it contained. 

Years afterward, when Stevenson was 
dead and Simoneau grown old, and the 
wine room and restaurant were closed, he 
and Madame became very poor, but they 
never considered selling their autographed 
Stevenson first editions, sent them by 
Stevenson from the different places he 
was afterward hving in in Europe; nor 
Stevenson's letters, though they were 
offered more than once an amount that 
would have raised them above penury. 
Simoneau would not even allow their 
publication, saying, "They were not to 
the public, they were Louis's letters to 
me." But day by day Madame, in her 
neat calico dress, made Mexican tamales; 
and Simoneau, with flowing white beard 
[21] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

and in clean blue overalls, basket on arm, 
peddled them on the streets of Monterey. 

Sadder days than these were yet 
in store for Simoneau. Madame died; 
Simoneau, through age, became too 
feeble to work. But lovers of Stevenson 
would not see the old man suffer or be 
forced to part with his books or letters, 
but gladly supplied his needs. To these 
friends he was fond of conversing about 
Stevenson, or *' Louis," as he always 
spoke of him. To Robert C. Porter, 
whom he knew would respect his desire 
to keep it private during his lifetime, 
he presented a copy of the most remark- 
able of Stevenson's letters, which appears 
in another place in this volume, among 
others to his California friends. 

The following is a letter from Simoneau 

to Mr. Porter: 

Monterey, 
March 20, 1899 
Mr. Robert Cushman Porter, 

San Francisco. 
Dear Sir, — Many thanks for your kind remem- 
brances. I received both the photograph and the 
book. 

[22] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

I will never forget your praising appreciation of the 
old philosopher type. I am proud of it. If ever you 
come to Monterey, or if some of your friends of the 
same kind as yourself come to Monterey, do not forget 
the old man. He will be glad always to receive you 
or your friends. Those visits will carry me back 
twenty-five years and make me as many years younger. 
Hoping to see you again, I remain 

Yours truly, 

J. SiMONEAU 

Best regards from my wife. 

I had yesterday a letter from Miss asking 

me the privilege of having the letters of Stevenson 
photographed for a firm of New York or from the east. 
The answer, as you think, has been a refusal on the 
ground that I do not want them published. After my 
death, maybe, my heirs will part with them. As for 
me, I esteem them at such price that no money can get 
them out of my hands, to have them given to the 
public. I want them for myself. A word from time 
to time from you will be always welcome. 

J. S. 

The illness in which he was nursed by 
Simoneau was a sad blow to Stevenson. 
His lungs were always weak. He had 
sufiFered more than once such attacks of 
prostration as he had on the Angora 
goat ranch in the Santa Lucia Mountains. 
But while living quietly in a mild climate, 
to start a pleuritic fever was a terrible 
disappointment. He felt, as he had not 
[23] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

done before, the certainty of death if he 
could not have rest and freedom from 
anxieties. He did not wish to die, for 
within himself he was conscious with 
what great talents he had been endowed, 
which in his mind carried with them 
great responsibilities. He was ambitious 
as well, if not selfishly so, and believed he 
was capable of better literary work than 
even his most intimate friends had imag- 
ined, if only health were given him. 
That he lived to verify his own judgment 
of himself, and that English literature 
was greatly enriched by his later volumes, 
is much due to the care Jules Simoneau 
gave him. 

Monterey is a town of two or three 
streets, "economically paved with sea- 
sand," grass-grown and cut with gullies 
washed out by the rains. They are 
unlit save by beams from the house- 
windows. The houses for the most part 
are built of unbaked adobe brick, with 
walls so thick that they can scarcely be 
warmed through by the sun of summer. 
[24] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

Most of them have been there since 
Monterey was the capital of Upper Cali- 
fornia, and some even date back still 
farther to the founding of the Catholic 
Missions. The houses are Spanish in 
type and some are of very elegant 
proportions, with low, spacious, shapely 
rooms. 

When Monterey was an American 
capital it was in the heyday of its glory. 
Dana has preserved for us a picture of 
that time in "Two Years Before the 
Mast." From one cause and another it 
declined in importance to being only the 
capital of a county and finally, by the 
loss of its charter and town lands, to 
a mere bankrupt village. The history 
of its families is parallel with its own. 
The descendants of its grandees are now 
poor and landless. Yet Monterey still 
preserves much of its ancient air and an- 
cient customs which make a happy com- 
munity and a delightful place of sojourn 
for visitors. 

A few weeks and Stevenson was 
[25] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

acquainted with every past and present 
condition of the town, on famihar terms 
of friendship with the people, and as 
interested in their welfare as an old 
inhabitant. It was not in the sick-room 
nor at writing that he spent all his time. 
When he was well enough he was much 
abroad, visiting every nook and cranny 
of the old Pacific capital, the sandy 
beach of the bay, the ocean front that lay 
concealed round the ultimate point of the 
bay shore, and the inland dunes and 
forests. 

The broad, white beach extends in one 
sweeping curve for miles to Santa Cruz. 
Along these sands was a walk of which 
Stevenson never tired. A too active 
mind, insatiate in its cravings, was not 
the least burden of his life. He gratefully 
seized on any sight or incident that held 
his attention and that also distracted his 
thoughts from his too sad broodings and 
loneliness. He found relief in watching 
the wild ducks, the sea-gulls hovering 
over the bay, the sand-pipers trotting in 
[26] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

and out by troops after the retiring 
waves, and there was the strange sea 
tangle heaped upon the beach and the 
novel sight of bones of whales. Best of 
all for him was that part of the shore 
opposite where the Hotel del Monte now 
stands, but which in Stevenson's day 
was but sand-hills and live-oaks like 
the waste still outside its beautiful 
grounds. From this point he watched 
the long waves forever rolling in slowly 
toward the beach, vast and green, and 
curving their translucent necks until they 
burst with a surprising uproar and flat- 
tened themselves out, with white foam 
borders, high up the sand; but to be 
drawn back with hiss and rumble into 
the next incoming line of waves. 

Westward from Monterey was a walk 
of another character. Among cliffs and 
granite boulders the breakers spouted 
and bellowed. There was a fishing village 
of Chinamen in a cove, farther on the 
Pacific Camp Grounds, now the town of 
Pacific Grove, set in a forest of pines, 
[27] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

and last of all Point Pinos with the 
lighthouse in a wilderness of sand. 
Where the bay met the Pacific there was 
an unending movement of the waters. 
Let the sun blaze overhead, and the air 
be without a breath, great rollers were 
forever running in along the external 
shore. On no other coast that he knew, 
Stevenson said, had he ''enjoyed so 
much, in all weathers, such a spectacle 
of ocean's greatness, such beauty of 
changing color, and so much thunder in 
the sound as at Monterey." 

For a change of walks he sometimes 
struck inland and explored the sand-hills 
and the lagoons. A rough undergrowth 
partially concealed the sand. Crouch- 
ing, hardy live-oaks flourished singly 
or in thickets, — "the kind of woods 
for murderers to crawl among." Several 
years later, when Stevenson was writing 
"Treasure Island," he drew on Monterey 
scenery for his description of the island 
where doubloons of Flint and his pirate 
companions were buried. It was in just 
[28] 



'^#^; 



A FOREST WALK, MONTEREY 



IN CALIFORNIA 

such a place as these sand-hills that 
Jim Hawkins found himself on leaving 
his mutinous shipmates whom he fol- 
lowed ashore. It was in just such a 
thicket of live-oaks, growing low along 
the sand like brambles, the boughs curi- 
ously twisted, the foliage compact like 
thatch, that he crawled and squatted 
when he heard the voices of the pirates 
near him and raised his head to an 
aperture among the leaves to see Long 
John Silver strike down with his crutch 
one of his mates who had refused to 
join in his plan of murder. 

When Stevenson prolonged his tramps 
into the pine woods about Monterey he 
found it always difficult to turn home- 
ward. Their emptiness gave him a sense 
of freedom and discovery. The long 
lanes paved with pine needles between 
the towering trunks lured him onward. 
The whole woodland was filled with the 
thundering surges of the sea which begirt 
it. "It set his senses on edge; he 
strained his attention; he walked listen- 
[29] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

ing like an Indian hunter; and that voice 
of the Pacific was a sort of disquieting 
company to him in his walk." 

On the cHffs of the coast, blown upon 
by harsh wind from the sea, there grew 
the pitch-pines of singular shapes. Still 
more fantastic trees were the Monterey 
cypresses. "No words can give an idea 
of the contortions of their growth; they 
might figure without change in a circle 
of the nether hell as Dante pictured it." 

One day Stevenson inadvertently set 
fire to the forest. A conflagration had 
been raging in another part of the woods 
and spread so rapidly that he wondered 
if it were the moss, that quaint funereal 
ornament of California forests, which so 
rapidly kindled. To test it, instead of 
plucking off a piece of moss from the 
tree, he touched a match to an attached 
tassel. In a moment the tree was a 
roaring pillar of flames. Not far off he 
could hear the shouts of men who were 
combating the original fire. He knew 
that there was only one thing for him to 
[30] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

do, and that was to escape before he was 
discovered, and he ran as he had never 
run in his Hfe before. 

The Cahfornia that was before the 
days of the discovery of gold and the 
coming of people from the Eastern 
States is best exemplified in the Indians 
of Carmel. Hither came the Franciscan 
friars and established one of their most 
flourishing missions in a fertile valley 
a few miles from Monterey. A great 
church was built where the Indians 
gathered for Christian services. But the 
mission has ceased to exist, the Indians 
are decimated and scattered, and the old 
church a ruin. At the time that Steven- 
son visited it, it was roofless, and sea 
breezes, and sea-fog, and the alternation 
of rain and sunshine bade fair to widen 
the breaches in the walls until they 
should be levelled. Fortunately the 
church has not been allowed to become 
a complete ruin, but of late years has 
been restored. 

One day in the year mass is still cele- 
[31] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

brated at its ancient altar. Stevenson 
was present at one of these annual ser- 
vices. The padre drove over the hill 
from Monterey. Only the sacristy at 
that time was covered and it was filled 
with seats and decorated for the service. 
The few descendants of that once great 
band of Carmel Indians, their bright 
dresses contrasting with their dark, 
melancholy faces, were there gathered 
together with a crowd of unsympathetic 
holiday makers that by contrast gave 
the last touch of pathos to the event. 
An old white-haired Indian, stone-blind, 
conducted the singing. Other Indians 
composed the choir. They knew per- 
fectly the Gregorian music and pro- 
nounced the Latin correctly. The faces 
of the singers lit up with joy as the 
music continued. It made a man's heart 
sorry for the good fathers of yore who 
had taught the Indians to dig and to 
reap, to read and to sing, who had given 
them European mass-books which they 
still preserve and study in their cottages, 
[32] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

and who have now passed away from all 
authority and influence in that land — 
to be succeeded by greedy land thieves, 
and even their graves hard by the church 
to be desecrated and the headstones to 
serve for targets for sacrilegious pistol 
shots. 

Nearly four months Stevenson re- 
mained in Monterey. The first month 
of this time Mrs. Osbourne, with her 
daughter and son and her sister, was 
occupying a picturesque old adobe on 
the main street, set deep in a garden 
having the famous rose tree which is 
pointed out to all visitors. It was the 
home of Senorita Bonifaccio, admired of 
General Sherman during his historic 
stay in the old Pacific capital, and 
their romance is told and retold to this 
day. Later, Mrs. Osbourne and her 
family returned to their home in East 
Oakland. 

While the Osbournes were in Monterey 
the marriage of Mrs. Osbourne's daughter 
[33] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

to Joe Strong, a painter, had taken 
place. 

It was of Mr. Strong, when later at 
Silverado he joined the Squatters, that 
Stevenson said, "A most good-natured 
comrade and a capital hand at an ome- 
lette. I do not know in which capacity 
he was most valued — as a cook or a 
companion, and he did excellently well 
in both." 

A few days before Christmas, 1879, 
Stevenson moved to San Francisco. 

Looking for a room he walked up 
Bush Street till he came to No. 608, 
where there was a sign in the window 
announcing furnished rooms to let. It 
was in the days when people lived 
farther down town than they do at 
present. The house was an old one and 
showed its dilapidation. It had been a 
two-story cottage, brought round the 
Horn. This part had been raised and a 
new story inserted underneath. There 
were French windows and green outside 
slat blinds. 

[34] 




THE CARSONS HOUSE 

No. 6 08 Bush Street, San Francisco 



IN CALIFORNIA 

What interested Stevenson more than 
all else was that the house faced south, 
and that there were balconies to the 
windows, running the width of the front, 
on all three floors. Air and sunshine, 
the two great desiderata for his health's 
sake, were to be found here. His ring 
brought to the door the landlady herself, 
Mrs. Mary Carson. 

If Stevenson eyed her with question- 
ing glances, no less suspiciously did she 
eye this new applicant for a room. She 
had just gone through an unhappy experi- 
ence with two London Germans, who had 
departed leaving several months' room 
rent unpaid; and she saw at once that 
Stevenson was also a foreigner. His 
manner and voice proclaimed it. More 
than that, to use her own words, "He 
was such a strange-looking, shabby shack 
of a fellow. Not that there was any- 
thing repellent in his looks, only his ap- 
pearance was not what his acquaintance 
bore. For when I came to know him, 
I just loved him like my own child." 
[35] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

His garb was in itself a disguise, as his 
clothing generally was. The secret of his 
dressing poorly, as he always did, was, 
first, his preoccupation in his art, and, 
second, because the money with which he 
might have bought himself better clothes 
always went to unfortunate friends whom 
he thought in more need of it. Only 
the necessary and useful much concerned 
him, and resulted rather nondescriptly 
occasionally. In Monterey he was one 
chilly morning in need of little heavier 
clothing than he had on. A coat was 
deemed too much; a jersey would have 
answered the purpose. Lacking it he 
pulled an extra undershirt on over the 
outside. Mrs. Carson describes his dress 
the day he came to her house seeking 
lodgings thus: "He wore a little brown 
rough ulster buttoned up tight under his 
chin, and Scotch brogues, the walking 
kind, laced up high, and his pants stuck 
in the tops, and a dicer hat." 

He was tall and thin naturally, and 
emaciated by illness. His hair was light 
[36] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

brown and down on his neck; his com- 
plexion olive but rich-tinted, for he never 
lost his color even in sickness; and his 
lips were full and red. His manners 
and gestures were like those of Latin 
people. 

Stevenson looked at the room to be 
rented. It was the southwest corner 
one on the second floor. It and a hall 
bedroom occupied the whole front. The 
larger room contained a bed, a table, a 
dresser, and two chairs; and there was 
an open fireplace. *'Here is all there is 
of it," honestly exclaimed Mrs. Carson, 
on throwing the door open. Stevenson 
liked a bare room to work in. He re- 
marked on the fireplace and the price 
and went away. Not long afterward he 
returned, closed a bargain with Mrs. 
Carson for the room, and with two grips 
moved in the same day. 

This house and one at No. 7 Mont- 
gomery Avenue, where, after his marriage, 
he and his wife went for a few days before 
moving to Mount Saint Helena, and the 
[37] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

old Occidental Hotel, where Stevenson 
stayed on his return eight years later to 
ship from this port for the South Seas, 
were the only houses Stevenson ever 
lived in in San Francisco. 

A certain house in San Francisco, called 
Stevenson's, was not his; in fact was 
not built until many years after his 
being there and even some time after 
his death. More than that, he never 
visited even the site on which that 
house stands. 

Seekers after literary landmarks will 
find nothing remaining in San Francisco 
connected with Stevenson, other than 
localities. The old house at No. 608 
Bush Street was torn down long before 
the great fire. When Stevenson returned 
the second time, and he and his mother 
climbed the Bush Street hill in search of 
Mrs. Carson, they found the old house 
gone and a new one erected in its place. 
The Montgomery Avenue house and the 
Occidental Hotel and the restaurants in 
which he ate are all gone; all were 
[38] 



.1^ 



m 



-^-.-'^ 




4 



MRS. MARY CARSON, WITH STEVENSON S 
STEP-GRANDCHILDREN 



IN CALIFORNIA 

swept away in the conflagration of 
1906. 

Of all the landmarks in San Francisco 
Portsmouth Square is the one most 
nearly connected with Stevenson. It is 
in the midst of the part of the city 
Stevenson found most interesting and 
which he portrayed in "The Wrecker," 
and it was here he often came to sit 
on the benches and watch the strange 
humanity that drifted thither. And it is 
in Portsmouth Square where his monu- 
ment is, which Mr. Bruce Porter and 
some other citizens of San Francisco set 
up to his memory, the first to be erected 
anywhere. 

Mrs. Carson still retains a most vivid 
remembrance of her lodger; of his happy 
presence in the house — although he was 
inwardly in sore distress, for he spoke 
years afterward of that time as being 
the saddest hours of his life. 

He spent most of his time in his room, 
generally writing. But he liked well to 
have his landlord or landlady come in to 
[39] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

have a talk with him. He was ready 
always to draw them out in conversation, 
and listened attentively, regarding them 
closely with his keen dark eyes all the 
while. In his hours of despondency Mrs. 
Carson's gay Irish ways and wit buoyed 
his spirits, and his heart responded to her 
many kindnesses: the fire she lit for him 
in his grate, the motherly little visits 
she paid him in his room when he was 
ill, the hot foot-baths, her tucking the 
blankets and the counterpane about him 
when, as was his usual way while writ- 
ing, he lay in bed, his head bolstered 
up with pillows, and his knees drawn up 
for a book-rest. 

His sympathies always drew the deep- 
est life stories from his friends, and it 
was not unnatural that when Mrs. Carson 
received a letter from an old flame of 
youthful days, it was carried to Steven- 
son. His refusal to her request that he 
write an answer (being an author and 
competent to compose it better than 
she) was made with the explanation 
[40] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

that he was sure the writer would a 
hundredfold rather have one written by 
herself than the most eloquently worded 
epistle by another. 

Mrs. Carson, speaking of Stevenson's 
ready indignation, says he was "that 
quick" but equally ready to apologize. 
His concern regarding the ruling passion 
of the Carsons, to gamble away on min- 
ing stocks all their savings, was like his 
desire always to help all those he met 
exactly in the way they needed it most. 
Stevenson said to Mrs. Carson on their 
memorable last meeting, "I hope you do 
not waste your money on the stocks." 
'* Stars, no, no!" replied Mrs. Carson. 
" No, I never buy mining stocks any more. 
I cannot, I have no more money. The 
stocks has got it all." Such were his 
sympathy and distress and his labor in 
helping with the nursing when the Car- 
son baby fell dangerously ill that it 
brought a new fit of illness on himself. 
To the Carsons with his usual frankness 
he told much of his own experiences, and 
141] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

took them into his confidence about his 
approaching marriage. 

When Stevenson returned to San Fran- 
cisco, of the family of four (Mrs. and Mr. 
Carson and their two Httle sons), only 
Mrs. Carson and Robbie, the one who 
had been the sick baby, were left. Not 
finding her at the old house, where he had 
gone at first to see her, and lacking 
strength to hunt farther, he sent her a 
letter to come to the Occidental Hotel. 
On the evening appointed, word was left 
in the office that she alone was to be 
shown up to Stevenson's room. When 
she entered, Stevenson from his bed held 
out his arms to her and drew her to him 
and kissed her "for auld lang syne." 

Not long since, in telling some one of 
Stevenson's life at her house, Mrs. Carson 
concluded: "I remember one morning 
papa's coming home, and he had a news- 
paper in his hand, and he said, 'Well, 
your author 's dead.' I had a picture of 
him he had sent me, enlarged and hung 
in the parlor; but I couldn't think of 
[42] 






o a 





IN CALIFORNIA 

anything when the big fire came, and 
somehow I left that and the silk sock of 
the author's he threw away in my house 
and that I had always kept my money 
in when I had some, and all the things 
I had cut out of the papers about him 
when he got famous, and they all burned. 
And do you know, there is something 
nice in all artists?" 

Stevenson's wonderful gift for friend- 
ship brought out the ready response we 
have seen in Simoneau and Mrs. Carson 
and other true hearts and warm and 
kindly natures like his own. But for 
any act of kindness or a favor received 
he repaid, when possible, a hundredfold. 
He was most generous with his money, 
and could never say no to a beggar. 
Importunate friends were helped to the 
extent of every cent he possessed. After 
he became famous and made with his 
writing twenty to twenty-five thousand 
dollars a year, httle was spent on him- 
self, but all went, just as his monthly 
allowance from his father had gone, to 
[43 1 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

his friends who happened to want it. 
With human nature what it is, it is not 
surprising that there were those who 
benefited by Stevenson's generosity when 
they stood in less need than he himself. 
And it is a sad fact that one in very 
easy circumstances, in England, owed 
Stevenson the most part of a consider- 
able sum of money his father gave him 
on coming of age, while he was sick and 
almost penniless thousands of miles from 
home. Stevenson was not the man to 
ask for it. But this was one of the fea- 
tures of his life that sadly made him 
liken himself to Cervantes' hero, and yet 
also brought out one of his famous prov- 
erbs: "Greatheart was deceived. 'Very 
well,' said Greatheart." This was really 
the summing up of his own life experi- 
ences and disillusions. 

The famous letter in "Across the 
Plains," "not written," as Stevenson 
said, "by Homer but by a boy of eleven," 
to "My Dear Sister Mary," and describ- 
ing his and his brother's attempt, before 
[44] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

the days of railroads, by ox team to go 
from Missouri to California, he got in 
San Francisco. Two of the boys reached 
"the good country," but one was slain 
by Indians on the plains. This letter 
was written by Martin Mahoney to his 
sister, afterward Mrs. Carson. It deeply 
interested Stevenson, who had so lately 
come the same journey but in the more 
comfortable way of travel, by train, and 
yet the hardships of which journey had 
been almost more than his strength. 
When Mrs. Carson one day gave Steven- 
son the letter, then twenty years old, to 
read, he took it to his room. Several 
days afterward he returned the letter to 
her but without comment. He was at 
the time writing "Across the Plains," 
in her humble upstairs front bedroom. 
After Stevenson had returned to Europe, 
one day the mail brought Mrs. Carson 
a copy of the completed volume and 
she beheld her precious letter, and the 
memory of her little brother who had 
escaped death at the hands of wild 
[45] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Indians on the plains, only to find an 
unknown and unmarked grave in the 
new country, there immortalized. Mar- 
tin Mahoney's body lies in the potter's 
field of Laurel Hill Cemetery on Lone 
Mountain, but his memory is as wide as 
the English-speaking world. 

While he lived in San Francisco, ill 
health and consequent hindrance in his 
writing brought Stevenson's purse to a 
low ebb. He could afford to go for his 
meals only to cheap restaurants. He got 
a ten-cent breakfast at a coffee-house on 
Sixth Street south of Market; for his 
dinner, which he took in the middle of 
the day, he went to Donadieu's restau- 
rant on Bush Street, between Dupont 
and Kearney; and for his supper he 
returned to the Sixth Street coffee-house. 
Needing later to reduce still further his 
expenses, he permitted himself but two 
meals, to bring his daily expenses to a 
forty-five-cent limit, and to the complete 
destruction of his health. 

It was when Mrs. Carson observed that 
[46] 








^ e 






IN CALIFORNIA 

he did not go out to a meal, that a tray 
from her own kitchen was carried by her- 
self to his room, with almost an apology: 
she wished him to taste her good soda 
biscuits, her coffee, or a chop. And when 
his room rent fell due and there was delay 
in payment, it never troubled her good 
heart. Stevenson spoke only too truly 
when he called her "the rose that had 
blossomed and bloomed under the bush." 

If to him his writing seemed to lag, the 
list does not appear a short one for three 
months' work. Much that was begun in 
Monterey was polished off and brought 
to a conclusion. Some useless work was 
put on "The Vendetta" before the whole 
was entirely abandoned. "Across the 
Plains" was mostly written at Mrs. 
Carson's. "The Amateur Emigrant" 
was finished and posted from there. 

Of this time of Stevenson's life we have 
his own description in the letters with 
which we are familiar, in the "Letters to 
His Family and Friends." Only that 
to Professor Meiklejohn of St. Andrew's 
[47] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

University in Scotland was not included. 
In spite of what is said in his letter to 
Professor Meiklejohn about seeking relief 
in works of adventure, there was a book 
of an entirely different kind that Steven- 
son kept constantly with him, carrying 
it about in his pocket in San Francisco 
street-cars and ferry-boats when he was 
full of unhappiness and anxieties and 
sick unto death, finding it at all times 
and places a peaceful and sweet compan- 
ion. It was Penn's ''Fruits of Solitude," 
printed in Philadelphia. 

The next winter, after he had returned 
to Europe and was at Davos, a health 
resort in Switzerland, he passed the 
volume on to Horatio F. Brown, not 
without some regret at parting with it. 

Professor Meiklejohn had just read his 
Burns and being greatly pleased with it 
wrote to tell Stevenson so. His cheering 
words were a god-send to Stevenson, not 
solely for its own sake, and because it 
confirmed his own estimate of his essay: 
"Burns, I beUeve, in my own mind, is 
[48] 






^^:!^&:^m 







>^>A^ 



X- 



rs^uf-w-: •,^; 



'"?7' 



.^1^^'^ 



#% 



I 



L 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

A Picture Never Before Published 



IN CALIFORNIA 

one of my high water marks," but it 
came at a time when he was sorely in 
need of encouragement and a pleasant 
word. His other literary friends had 
seen fit to fill their letters with criticisms 
and warnings which were the last things 
poor Stevenson wanted while sick and 
anxious and on the verge of collapse. 
In his reply Stevenson wrote: "When I 
suffer in mind, stories are my refuge; 
I take them like opium, and I consider 
one who writes them as a sort of doctor 
of the mind; and frankly, Meiklejohn, 
it is not Shakespeare we take to when 
we are in a hot corner; nor, certainly, 
George Eliot, — no, not even Balzac. 
It is Charles Reade, or old Dumas, or 
the 'Arabian Nights,' or the best of 
Walter Scott: it is stories we want, not 
the high poetic function which repre- 
sents the world; we are then like the 
Asiatic with his improvisator e, or the 
Middle Ages with the trouvere. We want 
incident, interest, action; to the devil 
with your philosophy. So I, when I 
[49] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

am ready to go beside myself, stick 
my head into a book, as the ostrich 
with her bush: let fate and fortune 
meantime belabor my posteriors as they 
will." 

The secret of much of Stevenson's 
misery while he was living at Mrs. 
Carson's Stevenson reveals farther on 
in his letter to Professor Meiklejohn: 
** When I may return is a great mystery. 
I am going to be married first, at least; 
but I suppose you had better not talk 
of it too much just yet, for my parents 
are very much opposed. This will give 
you a clue to some of my troubles." 



[50] 




A P P U t) A t: H TO SAN FRANCISCO 




THE NARROWS, SAN FRANCISCO 



IN CALIFORNIA 

The following is a description by 
Stevenson of the city of San Francisco, 
contributed to the London Magazine of 
Art, and written at Davos, February 18, 
1882: 

SAN FRANCISCO 
A MODERN COSMOPOLIS 

"The Pacific coast of the United 
States, as you may see by the map, and 
still better in that admirable book, *Two 
Years Before the Mast,' by Dana, is one 
of the most exposed and shelterless on 
earth. The trade- wind blows fresh; the 
huge Pacific swell booms along degree 
after degree of an unbroken line of coast. 
South of the joint firth of the Columbia 
and Willamette, there flows in no con- 
siderable river; south of Puget Sound 
there is no protected inlet of the ocean. 
Along the whole seaboard of California 
there are but two unexceptionable anchor- 
ages, the bight of the Bay of Monterey, 
and the inland sea that takes its name 
from San Francisco. 

[51] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

"Whether or not it was here that Drake 
put in, in 1597, we cannot tell. There 
is no other place so suitable; and yet the 
narrative of Francis Pretty scarcely seems 
to suit the features of the scene. Viewed 
from seaward, the Golden Gate should 
give no very English impression to justify 
the name of a New Albion. On the west, 
the deep lies open; nothing near but the 
still vexed Farallones. The coast is 
rough and barren. Tamalpais, a moun- 
tain of a memorable figure, springing 
direct from the sea-level, over-plumbs the 
narrow entrance from the north. On the 
south, the loud music of the Pacific 
sounds along beaches and cliffs, and 
among broken reefs, the sporting place 
of the sea-lion. Dismal, shifting sand- 
hills, wrinkled by the wind, appear be- 
hind. Perhaps, too, in the days of 
Drake, Tamalpais would be clothed to 
its peak with the majestic redwoods. 

"Within the memory of persons not 
yet old, a mariner might have steered 
into these narrows (not yet the Golden 
[52] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

Gate), opened out the surface of the 
bay, — here girt with hills, there lying 
broad to the horizon, — and beheld a 
scene as empty of the presence, as pure 
from the handiworks of man, as in the 
days of our old sea commander. A 
Spanish mission, fort, and church took 
the place of those 'houses of the people 
of the country' which were seen by 
Pretty, 'close to the water-side.' All 
else would be unchanged. Now, a gen- 
eration later, a great city covers the sand- 
hills on the west, a growing town lies 
along the muddy shallows of the east; 
steamboats pant continually between 
them from before sunrise till the small 
hours of the morning; lines of great sea- 
going ships lie ranged at anchor; colors 
fly upon the islands ; and from all around, 
the hum of corporate life, of beaten bells, 
and steam, and running carriages, goes 
cheerily abroad in the sunshine. Choose 
a place on one of the huge throbbing 
ferry-boats, and, when you are midway 
between the city and the suburb, look 
[53] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

around. The air is fresh and salt, as if 
you were at sea. On the one hand is Oak- 
land, gleaming white among its gardens. 
On the other, to seaward, hill after hill is 
crowded and crowned with the palaces 
of San Francisco; its long streets lie in 
regular bars of darkness, east and west, 
across the sparkling picture; a forest of 
masts bristles like bulrushes about its 
feet. Nothing remains of the days of 
Drake but the faithful trade-wind scatter- 
ing the smoke, the fogs that will begin 
to muster about sundown, and the fine 
bulk of Tamalpais looking down on San 
Francisco, like Arthur's Seat on Edin- 
burgh. 

"Thus in the course of a generation 
only, this city and its suburbs have 
arisen. Men are alive by the score who 
have hunted all over the foundations in a 
dreary waste. I have dined, near the 
'punctual centre' of San Francisco, with 
a gentleman (then newly married) who 
told me of his former pleasures, wading 
with his fowling-piece in sand and scrub, 
[54] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

on the site of the house where we were 
dining. In this busy, moving genera- 
tion, we have all known cities to cover 
our boyish playgrounds, we have all 
started for a country walk and stumbled 
on a new suburb; but I wonder what 
enchantment of the 'Arabian Nights' can 
have equalled this evocation of a roaring 
city, in a few years of a man's life, from 
the marshes and the blowing sand. Such 
swiftness of increase, as with an over- 
grown youth, suggests a corresponding 
swiftness of destruction. The sandy 
peninsula of San Francisco, mirroring 
itself on one side in the bay, beaten on 
the other by the surge of the PacijBc, and 
shaken to the heart by frequent earth- 
quakes, seems in itself no very durable 
foundation. According to Indian tales, 
perhaps older than the name of Cali- 
fornia, it once rose out of the sea in a 
moment, and some time or other shall, 
in a moment, sink again. No Indian, 
they say, cares to linger on that dreadful 
land. *The earth hath bubbles as the 
[55] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

water has, and this is of them.' Here, 
indeed, all is new, nature as well as towns. 
The very hills of California have an un- 
finished look; the rains and the streams 
have not yet carved them to their perfect 
shape. The forests spring like mush- 
rooms from the unexhausted soil; and 
they are mown down yearly by forest 
fires. We are in early geological epochs, 
changeful and insecure; and we feel, as 
with a sculptor's model, that the author 
may yet grow weary of, and shatter, the 
rough sketch. 

*' Fancy apart, San Francisco is a city 
beleaguered with alarms. The lower 
parts, along the bay side, sit on piles; 
old wrecks decaying, fish dwelling un- 
sunned, beneath the populous houses; 
and a trifling subsidence might drown 
the business quarters in an hour. Earth- 
quakes are not uncommon, they are 
sometimes threatening in their violence; 
the fear of them grows yearly on a resi- 
dent; he begins with indifference, ends 
in sheer panic; and no one feels safe in 
[56] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

any but a wooden house. Hence it 
comes that, in that rainless clime, the 
whole city is built of timber — a wood- 
yard of unusual extent and complication; 
that fires spring up readily, and, served 
by the unwearying trade- wind, swiftly 
spread; that all over the city there are 
fire-signal boxes; that the sound of the 
bell, telling the number of the threatened 
ward, is soon familiar to the ear; and 
that nowhere else in the world is the art 
of the fireman carried to so nice a point. 
"Next, perhaps, in order of strange- 
ness to the speed of its appearance, is the 
mingling of the races that combine to 
people it. The town is essentially not 
Anglo-Saxon; still more essentially not 
American. The Yankee and the Eng- 
lishman find themselves alike in a strange 
country. There are none of those 
touches — not of nature, and I dare 
scarcely say of art — by which the Anglo- 
Saxon feels himself at home in so great 
a diversity of lands. Here, on the con- 
trary, are airs of Marseilles and of Pekin. 
[57] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

The shops along the street are Hke the 
consulates of different nations. The 
passers-by vary in feature like the slides 
of a magic lantern. For we are here in 
that city of gold to which adventurers 
congregated out of all the winds of 
heaven; we are in a land that till the 
other day was ruled and peopled by the 
countrymen of Cortes; and the sea that 
laves the piers of San Francisco is the 
ocean of the East and of the isles of 
summer. There goes the Mexican, un- 
mistakable; there the blue-clad China- 
man with his white slippers; there the 
soft-spoken, brown Kanaka, or perhaps 
a waif from far-away Malaya. You 
hear French, German, Italian, Spanish, 
and English indifferently. You taste the 
food of all nations in the various restau- 
rants; passing from a French prix-fixe, 
where every one is French, to a roaring 
German ordinary, where every one is 
German; ending, perhaps, in a cool and 
silent Chinese tea-house. For every man, 
for every race and nation, that city 
[58 1 



IN CALIFORNIA 

IS a foreign city, humming with foreign 
tongues and customs; and yet each and 
all have made themselves at home. The 
Germans have a German theatre and 
innumerable beer gardens. The French 
Fall of the Bastile is celebrated with 
squibs and banners and marching pa- 
triots, as noisily as the American Fourth 
of July. The Itahans have their dear 
domestic quarter, with Italian carica- 
tures in the windows, Chianti and polenta 
in the taverns. The Chinese are settled 
as in China. The goods they offer for 
sale are as foreign as the lettering on the 
sign board of the shop: dried fish from 
the China seas; pale cakes and sweet- 
meats, the like, perhaps, once eaten 
by Badroulboudour; nuts of unfriendly 
shape; ambiguous, outlandish vegetables 
— misshapen, lean, or bulbous — telling 
of a country where the trees are not as 
our trees, and the very back garden is a 
cabinet of curiosities. The joss house is 
hard by, heavy with incense, packed 
with quaint carvings and the parapher- 
[59] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

nalia of a foreign ceremonial. All these 
you behold, crowded together in the 
narrower arteries of the city, cool, sunless, 
a little mouldy, with the high, musical 
sing-song of that alien language in your 
ears. Yet the houses are of Occidental 
build; the lines of a hundred telegraphs 
pass, thick as a ship's rigging, overhead, 
a kite hanging among them, perhaps, or 
perhaps two — one European, one 
Chinese in shape and color. Mercantile 
Jack, the Italian fisher, the Dutch mer- 
chant, the Mexican vaquero, go hustling 
by. At the sunny end of the street, a 
thoroughfare roars with European traffic; 
and meanwhile, high and clear, outbreaks, 
perhaps, the San Francisco fire alarm, 
and people pause to count the strokes 
and in the stations of the double fire ser- 
vice you know that the electric bells are 
ringing, the traps opening and clapping 
to, and the engine, manned and harnessed, 
being whisked into the street, before the 
sound of the alarm has ceased to vibrate 
on your ear. Of all romantic places for 
[60] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

a boy to loiter in, that Chinese quarter 
is the most romantic. There, on a half- 
hoHday, three doors from home, he may 
visit an actual foreign land, foreign in 
people, language, things, and customs. 
The very barber of the 'Arabian Nights' 
shall be at work before him, shaving 
heads; he shall see Aladdin playing on 
the streets; who knows, but among those 
nameless vegetables, the fruit of the rose 
tree itself may be exposed for sale? And 
the interest is heightened with a chill of 
horror. Below, you hear, the cellars are 
alive with mystery; opium dens, where 
the smokers lie above one another, shelf 
above shelf, close-packed and grovelling 
in deadly stupor; the seats of unknown 
vices and cruelties, the prisons of un- 
acknowledged slaves, and the secret laza- 
rettoes of disease. 

"With all this mass of nationahties, 
crime is common. Amid such a competi- 
tion of respectabilities, the moral sense 
is confused; in this camp of gold-seekers, 
speech is loud and the hand is ready. 
[61] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

There are rough quarters where it is 
dangerous o' nights; cellars of public 
entertainment which the wary pleasure- 
seeker chooses to avoid. Concealed 
weapons are unlawful, but the law is 
continually broken. One editor was shot 
dead while I was there; another walked 
the streets accompanied by a bravo, his 
guardian angel. I have been quietly 
eating a dish of oysters in a restaurant, 
where, not more than ten minutes after 
I had left, shots were exchanged and took 
effect; and one night, about ten o'clock, 
I saw a man standing watchfully at a 
street corner with a long Smith-and- 
Wesson glittering in his hand behind his 
back. Somebody had done something 
he should not, and was being looked for 
with a vengeance. It is odd, too, that 
the seat of the last vigilance committee I 
know of — a mediseval Fehmgericht — 
was none other than the Palace Hotel, 
the world's greatest caravanserai, served 
by Ufts and lit with electricity; where, 
in the great glazed court, a band nightly 
[62] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

discourses music from a grove of palms. 
So do extremes meet in this city of con- 
trasts: extremes of wealth and poverty, 
apathy and excitement, the conveniences 
of civilization, and the red justice of 
Judge Lynch. The streets lie straight 
up and down the hills and straight 
across at right angles, these in the 
sun, those in the shadow, a trenchant 
pattern of gloom and glare; and what 
with the crisp illumination, the sea air 
singing in your ears, the chill and glit- 
ter, the changing aspects both of things 
and people, the fresh sights at every cor- 
ner of your walk — sights of the bay, of 
Tamalpais, of steep, descending streets, 
of the outspread city — whiffs of alien 
speech, sailors singing on shipboard, 
Chinese coolies toiling on the shore, 
crowds brawling all day in the street 
before the Stock Exchange — one brief 
impression follows another, and the city 
leaves upon the mind no general and 
stable picture, but a profusion of airy 
and incongruous images, of the sea and 
[63] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

shore, the East and West, the summer 
and the winter. 

"In the better parts of this most in- 
teresting city there is apt to be a touch 
of the commonplace. It is in the slums 
and suburbs that the city dilettante finds 
his game, and there is nothing more 
characteristic and original than the 
outlying quarters of San Francisco. The 
Chinese district is the most famous; but 
it is far from the only truffle in the pie. 
There is many another dingy corner, 
many a young antiquity, many a terrain 
vague with that stamp of quaintness that 
a city-lover seeks and dwells on; and the 
indefinite prolongation of its streets, up 
hill and down vale, makes San Francisco 
a place apart. The same street in its 
career visits and unites so many different 
classes of society, here echoing with drays, 
there lying decorously silent between the 
mansions of bonanza millionaires, to 
founder at last among the drifting sands 
beside Lone Mountain cemetery, or die 
out among the sheds and lumber of the 
[64] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

north. Thus you may be struck with a 
spot, set it down for the most romantic 
in the city, and, glancing at the name 
plate, find it is on the same street that 
you yourself inhabit in another quarter 
of the town. 

"The great net of straight thorough- 
fares lying at right angles, east and west 
and north and south, over the shoulders 
of Nob Hill, the hill of palaces, must cer- 
tainly be counted the best part of San 
Francisco. It is there that the million- 
aires are gathered together, vying with 
each other in display; looking down upon 
the business wards of the city. That is 
California Street. Far away down you 
may pick out a building with a little 
belfry; and that is the Stock Exchange, 
the heart of San Francisco : a great pump 
we might call it, continually pumping 
up the savings of the lower quarters into 
the pockets of the millionaires upon the 
hill. But these same thoroughfares that 
enjoy for a while so elegant a destiny 
have their lines prolonged into more 
[65] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

unpleasant places. Some meet their fate 
in the sands; some must take a cruise 
in the ill-famed China quarters; some 
run into the sea; some perish unwept 
among pig sties and rubbish heaps. 

"Nob Hill comes, of right, in the place 
of honor; but the two other hills of San 
Francisco are more entertaining to ex- 
plore. On both there are a world of old 
wooden houses snoozing away all for- 
gotten. Some are of the quaintest de- 
sign, others only romantic by neglect 
and age; some are curiously painted; 
and I have seen one at least with ancient 
carvings panelled in its wall. Surely they 
are not of California building, but far 
voyagers from round the stormy Horn, 
like those who sent for them and dwelt 
in them at first. Brought to be the 
favorites of the wealthy, they have sunk 
into these poor, forgotten districts, where, 
like old town toasts, they keep each 
other silent countenance. Telegraph 
Hill and Rincon Hill, these are the dozing 
quarters that I recommend to the city 
[66] 




TAMALPAIS 




ANOTHER VIEW OF TAMALPAIS 



IN CALIFORNIA 

dilettante. There stand these forgotten 
houses, enjoying the unbroken sun and 
quiet. There, if there were such an 
author, would the San Francisco Fortune 
de Boisgobey pitch the first chapter of 
his mystery. But the first is the quainter 
of the two. Visited under the broad 
natural daylight, and with the relief and 
accent of reality, these scenes have a 
quality of dream-land and of the best 
pages of Dickens. Telegraph Hill, be- 
sides, commands a noble view; and as it 
stands at the turn of the Bay, its skirts 
are all water-side, and round from North 
Reach to the Bay Front you can follow 
doubtful paths from one quaint corner to 
another. Everywhere the same tumble- 
down decay and sloppy progress, new 
things yet unmade, old things tottering 
to their fall; everywhere the same out- 
at-elbows, many-nationed loungers at 
dim, irregular grog-shops; everywhere 
the same sea-air and isleted sea prospect; 
and for a last and more romantic note, 
you have on the one hand Tamalpais 
[67] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

standing high in the blue air, and on the 
other the tail of that long alignment of 
three-masted, full-rigged, deep-sea ships 
that make a forest of spars along the 
eastern front of San Francisco. In no 
other port is such a navy congregated. 
For the coast trade is so trifling, and the 
ocean trade from round the Horn so 
large, that the smaller ships are swal- 
lowed up and can do nothing to confuse 
the majestic order of these merchant 
princes. In an age when the ship of the 
line is already a thing of the past, and 
we can never hope to go coasting in a 
cockboat between the 'wooden walls' of 
a squadron at anchor, there is perhaps 
no place on earth where the power and 
beauty of sea architecture can be so per- 
fectly enjoyed as in this bay." 

Stevenson met not a great many people 
in San Francisco, but some of the dearest 
friendships of his life were formed here. 
First must come the Williamses: Virgil 
Williams, the painter and the founder of 
[68] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

the California School of Art, and its 
director for thirteen years — until his 
death; and his wife, Dora Norton Wil- 
liams. These two had long been friends 
of the Osbournes, and Mrs. Osbourne 
and her children had been pupils in 
drawing in the Art School, before their 
going to Europe, where they met Steven- 
son. Mr. and Mrs. Williams, when 
Stevenson came to San Francisco, were 
living in the old Supreme Court building 
on Montgomery Street, at that time 
transformed into studios and living-rooms 
for artists. 

Mrs. Williams was ill and alone one 
afternoon, when Mrs. Osbourne brought 
Stevenson with her to pay a visit. At 
first Stevenson made not much of an 
impression. Mrs. Williams observed 
that he was tall and thin and in disarray, 
and had fine eyes and carried his figure 
well. He was silent and left most of the 
conversation to the ladies. Next day 
Stevenson came again to get what he 
called his gum coat, which he had for- 
[69] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

gotten when he went away the day before. 
The two got into a pleasant animated 
discussion and he remained some time. 
Stevenson shone best always in talk; 
and those who knew him declare that his 
written works, wonderful as they are, are 
not the equal of his conversation, when 
"all the many lights and colors of his 
richly compounded spirit could be seen 
in full play." He had a peculiarly beau- 
tiful voice, with a rich, round, but not 
provincial, Scotch accent. While he con- 
versed with Mrs. Williams, he paced up 
and down the floor in his usual fashion, 
with rapid and graceful motion, or hung 
on the mantel-piece. It was not strange 
that the conversation turned on the sub- 
ject of the relations of America and Great 
Britain. 

Stevenson regretted that England had 
lost the Colonies. He pictured the States 
under British rule, with America the seat 
of government of the whole empire. He 
dwelt upon the benefits that would have 
accrued to the whole English-speaking 
[701 



IN CALIFORNIA 

race from such a union, and to all man- 
kind, with Great Britain and America 
ruling the world for peace and righteous- 
ness. In a flight of fancy, and with all 
the richness of language that was his, he 
pictured the actual transporting of the 
royal family and all the paraphernalia of 
government across the Atlantic, the 
pageantry of the ships and the gorgeous 
landing, and the setting up of the throne 
at Washington. 

While Stevenson was talking, Mr. 
Williams came in. He looked doubtfully 
from Mrs. Williams to the stranger; for, 
as he told his wife afterwards, he thought 
a tramp had got in and she could not get 
him out again. But it was only for a 
moment, and soon the two men were 
talking with all the interest and pleasure 
of those who feel much in common, and 
from that day began a friendship between 
the two that never ended until the death 
of Virgil Williams. 

Mrs. Williams recalls a very character- 
istic incident in Stevenson's stay in San 
[71] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Francisco. A jaunt to the Golden Gate 
Park had been planned by the Williamses 
and Stevenson, but when the day arrived 
it was bleak and damp, a day of fog and 
wind. The Williamses would have been 
glad to forego the little excursion; but 
Stevenson appeared to wish it, and with 
not much anticipation of pleasure they 
joined Stevenson. 

At once his spirits seemed to rise. 
He was talkative, sportive, gay. The 
weather was forgotten, both the cold and 
the wet; a holiday spirit was kindled in 
all their veins by Stevenson. They spent 
the afternoon walking along the paths 
and through the trees and bushes, and 
returned at evening for a dinner at a 
down-town restaurant. And so pleasant 
did the time seem that it remained a red- 
letter day in Mrs. Williams's memory; 
and yet all the gayety was made by 
Stevenson, and at the very time when his 
heart was heavy. 

During the time that Stevenson lived 
in Mrs. Carson's room, the Williamses 
[72] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

moved to Taylor Street, near Geary. It 
is this house that Stevenson refers to in 
his letter to Virgil Williams from Bourne- 
mouth, given farthe on. 

Virgil Williams introduced Stevenson 
at the Bohemian Club, then occupying 
rooms over the old California Market, at 
No. 430 Pine Street, and on the same 
floor with the Art School. Here Steven- 
son was afterward wont to go to sit and 
read or talk with some of the members. 
But he is remembered most at the 
Club as a reserved, melancholy-looking 
figure poring over a book. There were 
three other members of the Club besides 
Williams for whom Stevenson conceived 
a warm regard. These were Judge 
Rearden and Judge John Boalt, of the 
latter of whom Stevenson said that he 
was the finest type of American gen- 
tleman that he had met, and Charles 
Warren Stoddard, professor and author, 
who was most instrumental in inducing 
Stevenson, a number of years later, to 
embark for the South Seas. 
[73] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Much as Stevenson admired Judge 
Boalt, there seems never to have been 
any correspondence between them by 
letter after Stevenson left San Francisco. 
But Stevenson and Stoddard continued 
their intimacy by writing and exchange 
of books and by occasional meetings. 

In *'The Wrecker," the chapter on 
"Faces on the City Front" is a descrip- 
tion of the place on Telegraph Hill where 
Stevenson first visited Stoddard, and 
from which he went home armed with 
Stoddard's own "South Sea Idylls" and 
a volume of Herman Melville's "Typee." 

The break-down Stevenson experienced 
after four months in San Francisco, 
brought on by helping to nurse the Car- 
son baby, was very serious. Dr. Willey 
of San Francisco was his physician. 
In the dedication of "Underwood" to 
his doctors in many parts of the world, 
of Dr. Willey, Stevenson said, "His kind- 
ness to a stranger, it must be as grateful 
to him as it is touching to me to remem- 
ber." 

[74] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

Mrs. Osbourne had Stevenson moved 
to her cottage in East Oakland, where 
the dimate was better for his weak 
lungs, and where he could have the care 
he needed. Dr. Bamford was called in to 
attend him. For six weeks it was a toss- 
up for life or death. He seemed on the 
verge of a galloping consumption, he had 
cold sweats, fever, prostrating attacks 
of cough, sinking fits in which he lost the 
power of speech, but after a few weeks 
he once more began picking up. He 
said: "I have come out of all this, and 
got my feet once more on a httle hill-top, 
with a fair prospect of hfe and some new 
desire of hving. Yet I did not wish to 
die, neither; only I felt unable to go 
on farther with that rough horse-play of 
human life: a man must be pretty well 
to take the business in good part. Yet I 
felt all the time I had done nothing to 
entitle me to an honorable discharge; 
that I had taken up many obligations 
and begun many friendships which I had 
no right to put away from me; and that 
[75] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

for me to die was to play the cur and 
slinking Sybarite, and desert the colors 
on the eve of the decisive fight." 

The following hnes, written at this 
same time, express the same thought: 

Not yet, my soul, these friendly fields desert. 

Freedom is far, rest far. Thou art with life 
Too closely woven, nerve and nerve entwined; 
Service still craving service, love for love ! 
A bond at birth is forged ; a debt doth lie 
Immortal on mortality. 

Leave not, my soul, the unfoughten field, nor 

leave 
Thy debts dishonored, nor thy "place desert 
Without due service rendered. 
Up, spirit, and defend that fort of clay. 
Thy body, now beleaguered; whether soon 
Or late she fall ; whether to-day thy friends 
Bewail thee dead, or, after years, a man 
Grown old in honor and the friend of peace. 
Contend, my soul, for moments and for 

hours; 
Each is with service pregnant; each re- 
claimed 
Is as a kingdom conquered, where to reign. 
[76] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

No sooner did Stevenson's parents 
learn of his illness than money was tele- 
graphed him, and the news that he was 
to count on two hundred and fifty pounds, 
or twelve hundred dollars odd, a year. 

About the same time Mrs. Osbourne 
obtained a divorce from her husband, 
but without provision for her or her 
minor child's support. Stevenson was on 
the mend, but the doctors gave him no 
hope of complete recovery, nor even 
many months to live. An early marriage 
of himself and Mrs. Osbourne was the 
best thing for both. 

A wife could give him the care he very 
much needed; and when he died, there 
would be the pension of a Scottish 
advocate for his widow; and he believed 
that his father, who was a man of very 
comfortable fortune, would also make 
some provision for her out of an inherit- 
ance that would have naturally come to 
him, his only child. But he was too 
unselfish a man to have taken a wife for 
the sake of the care she could give 
[77] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

him; and he said afterward, when month 
after month, and even for years, he 
experienced only the weary prison of the 
sick-room, had he known that he would 
live to be an invalid he never would have 
married. 

The marriage took place quietly in San 
Francisco, May 19, 1880, in a manner 
simple and suitable. Mr. Stevenson and 
his wife to be went to the Taylor Street 
residence of Mrs. Virgil Williams, and 
she walked with them to the house of the 
Rev. Dr. Scott, the Presbyterian minis- 
ter, on Sutter Street, near his church on 
Union Square. Presbyterian was the 
denomination of his father's and his 
mother's famihes, and if he held broader 
religious views himself, it was the church 
in which he had been brought up. 
Stevenson had been to the minister's be- 
fore and made the arrangements; and 
Dr. Scott pronounced the ceremony with 
only Mrs. Williams as witness. 

When Stevenson was about to dedicate 
**The Silverado Squatters," he wrote: 
[78] 




WOODS, N K A K ST. II K L E N A 




WOODS, ON THE WAY TO SILVERADO 



IN CALIFORNIA 

** There remain C. S. and the WilHamses; 
you know they were the parties who stuck 
up for us about the marriage; and Mrs. 
WilHams was my guardian angel, and 
our best man and bridesmaid rolled into 
one, and the only third of the wedding 
party." 

Another time Stevenson, referring to 
his marriage, said: "It was not my bliss 
that I was interested in when I was 
married, it was a sort of marriage in 
extremis; and if I am where I am, it is 
thanks to the care of that lady who 
married me when I was a mere complica- 
tion of cough and bones, much fitter to 
be an emblem of mortality than a bride- 
groom." 

As a wedding present the minister gave 
Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson a volume of his 
own authorship on some theological sub- 
ject; and Stevenson sent him afterward 
a volume (of which he remarked with 
a certain amused satisfaction, "that it 
matched in bulk as well as theme") by 
his father, Thomas Stevenson, on some 
[79] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

mooted questions about some passages 
in the Bible. 

After their wedding Mr. and Mrs. 
Stevenson remained a few days in fur- 
nished rooms at No. 7 Montgomery- 
Avenue, and then went to Cahstoga in 
Napa Valley. They had in mind to get 
a small place away from sea fogs, where 
Stevenson could be out-of-doors all day. 
"It is the change I want," he wrote, 
"and the blessed sun, and a gentle air in 
which I can sit out and see the trees and 
running water." 

The Williamses had a ranch on the 
slopes of Mount Saint Helena. This 
influenced their choice of location; and 
it was a place easy and inexpensive to 
reach from San Francisco. 

The journey to Calistoga, the search 
for a house, and all the days following in 
the miner's cabin at the old deserted 
mine of Silverado are all described with a 
master's touch in "Silverado Squatters." 
Copious notes for the book were made on 
the spot, but the book itself was not writ- 
[80] 




WILLIAMS RANCH, ST. HELENA 




TOLL HOUSE, SILVERADO 




WILLIAMS RANCH, ST. HELEN A 




TOLL HOUSE, SILVERADO 



IN CALIFORNIA 

ten until after his return to Europe. He 
worked on it from time to time, as he 
wandered from one health resort to 
another in Switzerland and the High- 
lands of Scotland, and finally finished it 
at Hyeres in the south of France. 

The following is an inscription Steven- 
son wrote on the fly-leaf of the copy he 
sent to Virgil and Dora Norton Williams, 
to whom it is dedicated : 

Here from the forelands of the tideless sea^ 

Behold and take my offering, unadorned. 

Or, shall we say, defaced by Joseph's art. 

In the Pacific air it sprang; it grew 

Among the silence of the Alpine air; 

In Scottish heather blossomed, and at last 

By that unshaken sapphire, in whose face 

Spain, Italy, France, Algiers, and Tunis 

view 

Their introverted mountains, came to fruit. 

Back now, my Booklet, on the diving ship. 

And posting on the rails, to home return. 

Home, and the friends whose honoring 

name you bear, 

R. L. S. 

[81] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

To reach Mount Saint Helena from 
San Francisco, Stevenson and his wife 
went by way of Oakland and Vallejo 
Junction. The first night on the way 
was passed in South Vallejo at the 
Frisby House, a hotel of decayed for- 
tunes set in dismal surroundings, be- 
tween narrows of an arm of the Bay of 
San Francisco and some marshy pools. 
Next day the journey was resumed. 

For some way beyond Vallejo the rail- 
way ran through bald green pastures 
extending to low, distant hills. But by 
and by the hills began to draw nearer 
on either hand and their sides to be 
clothed with woods. A great variety 
of oaks stood sometimes severally, again 
in groves, among fields and vineyards. 
There were towns of bright wooden 
houses overshadowed by great forest 
trees. This was the green and pleasant 
Napa Valley. The north end was block- 
aded by Mount Saint Helena, the place 
sought by Stevenson. At its foot, where 
the railroad ceased, was the town of 
[82] 




ON THE WAY TO SILVERADO 



IN CALIFORNIA 

Calistoga. Those who intended going 
farther, to the geysers or to the springs 
in Lake County, had to cross the moun- 
tain by stage. The floor of the valley 
was level to the very roots of the hills 
and in the narrowed end was the pleas- 
ant and forested town of Calistoga. 
There was a single street topping the 
highway that came up the valley and the 
railroad about parallel to it. The clear, 
bright, low houses were between the rail- 
way station and the road. Alone, on the 
other side of the railway, stood the 
Springs Hotel, surrounded by a system 
of little five-roomed cottages, each with 
a veranda and a weedy palm before the 
door. Since Stevenson's day it has been 
destroyed by fire and risen again from 
its ashes. It was one of these little 
country cottages, dependencies of the 
hotel, that Stevenson and his wife occu- 
pied for a time while Stevenson rested 
and regained his strength. It was a 
pleasant place to dwell in; often visited 
by fresh airs, now from Mount Saint 
[83] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Helena, now across Sonoma from the 
sea. It was very quiet, very idle, and 
silent but for the breezes in the trees and 
the cattle bells in the fields. 

The whole neighborhood of Mount 
Saint Helena is full of sulphur and boiling 
springs. At one end of the hotel en- 
closure there bubbled up, from some sub- 
terranean lake, water hot enough to 
scald. 

*' There was something satisfactory in 
the sight of the great mountain enclosing 
us on the north," wrote Stevenson, 
"whether it stood robed in sunshine, 
quaking to its topmost pinnacle with the 
heat and brightness of the day, or whether 
it set itself to wearing vapors, wisp after 
wisp, growing, trembling, fleeting, and 
fading in the blue." It overtowered 
everything else, and dwarfed the tangled, 
woody, foothills. In no part of the 
valley is it ever out of sight. Its profile 
is bold, the great bald summit, clear of 
trees and pasture, was a cairn of quartz 
and cinnabar. 

[84] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

Sometimes it was seen framed in a 
grove of oaks. Sometimes in a picture 
of blue hilly distance this bulk of moun- 
tain rose, bare atop, with tree-fringed 
spurs, the most conspicuous figure. 

The woods about Calistoga were species 
of trees new to Stevenson, the madrona, 
the manzanita, the wild nutmeg, and the 
bay, and here for the first time he walked 
amid redwoods. Here also he noted the 
imminent destruction of all these most 
magnificent of forests, saw the circles of 
young trees that spring around the ruins 
of the old and larger trees, for Calistoga 
has not escaped the woodman and the 
lumberman. *' Redwoods and redskins, 
the two noblest indigenous living things, 
alike condemned." 

All the slopes of Mount Saint Helena, 
now so quiet and sylvan, were once alive 
with mining camps and villages. But 
luck failed and mines petered out. The 
army of miners had departed and left 
deserted towns and empty houses be- 
hind them. Stevenson had heard of 
[85] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

one such place, Pine Flat, on the Geysers 
road, where he might get a ready-made 
house rent free in a climate where he 
hoped to regain his health. But a roof 
overhead and a spring of water at the 
door does not solve the squatter's whole 
problem. Food had yet to be con- 
sidered, and the necessity of living on 
canned meats and milk, on being de- 
pendent on the stage drivers to bring 
supplies, made Pine Flat impossible. The 
store-keeper of Calistoga, a Russian Jew, 
whom Stevenson named Kelmar in 
*' Silverado Squatters," was consulted. 
Kelmar shook his head at the mention 
of Pine Flat. Later, one fine morning, 
he announced to Stevenson that he had 
found the very place for him, — Silver- 
ado, another old mining town right up 
the mountain. That his help in settling 
the Stevensons at Silverado was not 
wholly disinterested they found later 
when they came to know how all the 
people of the region were vassals of the 
Jew store-keeper, made so by credit he 
[861 



IN CALIFORNIA 

oflfered till they were beyond their depth. 
In this instance every penny expended 
at Silverado found its way into Kelmar's 
till at last. 

Kelmar himself, accompanied by his 
wife and a friend and her little daughter, 
drove Mr. and Mrs. Stevenson one 
Sunday morning to Silverado. The road 
ran for two miles through the valley, 
skirting the eastern foothills; then it 
struck off to the right through high land 
and presently, crossing a dry water- 
course, entered the Toll road, or, as it 
was called, "the grade." This mounted 
a shoulder of Mount Saint Helena. In 
one place it skirted the edge of a narrow 
deep canon, filled with trees. Vineyards 
and meadows gave way to woods of oak 
and madrona, dotted with pines, as it 
ascended. 

The road crossed the summit of the 
ridge and plunged down a deep, thickly 
wooded glen on the farther side. At the 
highest point in the road a trail struck 
up the main hill to the leftward which 
[87] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

led to Silverado. A hundred yards be- 
yond, in a kind of elbow of the glen, 
stood the Toll House Hotel. 

The house was gray and of two stories, 
with gable ends and a veranda. There 
were also stables and a water-tank. All 
were jammed hard against the hillside, 
just where a stream had cut for itself a 
narrow canon, filled with pines. The 
pines went right up overhead and the 
stream could easily have been made to 
play on the roof like a fire-hose. In 
front of the hotel the ground dropped as 
sharply as it rose behind. There was 
just room for the road and a small flat 
used for a croquet ground. The toll-bar 
itself was a long beam, turning on a post 
and upheld by the counterweight of 
stones. At sunset this barrier was swung 
across the road and made fast to a tree. 

Arrived at the Toll House the town of 
Silverado was sought on foot. A hill 
had to be climbed and woods stumbled 
through before the Stevensons, followed 
by the Kelmars, came out upon the 
[88] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

sought-for site of the old mining town. 
But here was a disappointment. A single 
house bearing the sign, " Silverado Hotel," 
was remaining. All the other houses 
had been moved away; one of them was 
being used as a school -house far down 
the road. There was not another sign 
of habitation besides the "Silverado 
Hotel," and it was already occupied by 
one Rufe Hanson and his family. But 
it was the Hansons that made known the 
existence of some cabins at the tunnel 
of the mines. 

About a furlong from Silverado, at the 
end of a road that ran along the hillside 
through the forest, was the mine. A 
canon, wooded below, red, rocky, and 
naked overhead, was walled across by a 
dump of rolling stones, steep and about 
thirty feet high. A rusty iron chute on 
wooden props extended beyond the top. 

It was down this the ore from the mine 

was wont to be poured into carts which 

stood waiting below ready to carry it to 

the mill down the mountain. To mount 

[89] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

the dump, two lengths of wooden ladder, 
fixed in the hillside, had to be ascended. 
Beyond the dump over loose rubble a 
triangular earth platform was reached, 
filling up the whole glen and shut in on 
either hand by the bold projections of 
the mountains. "Only in front was the 
place open like the proscenium of a 
theatre, and it looked forth into a great 
realm of air and down upon tree tops and 
hilltops, and far and near on wild and 
varied country." The place remained as 
it had been deserted: a line of iron rails, 
a truck, lumber, old wood, old iron, 
a blacksmith's forge on one side half 
buried in madronas, and on the other 
an old brown wooden house of three 
rooms. Farther behind in the overgrown 
canon there was a great crazy staging in 
front of an open shaft leading edgewise 
into the mountain. Close by, another 
shaft led edgewise up into the superin- 
cumbent shoulder of the hill. It lay 
partly open and, high above, the strata 
were propped apart by solid wooden 
[90] 





o o 









IN CALIFORNIA 

wedges. There was also a horizontal 
tunnel running back, straight into the 
mountain. The view on farther up the 
canon was a glimpse of devastation, — 
crags, dry red minerals, and here and 
there a dwarf thicket, very unlike the 
green downward view toward the valley. 
The house was but the cabin for miners. 
The three rooms were on three different 
elevations as they could find room and 
resting-place at the side of the narrow 
canon. It was in a state of utter dilapi- 
dation without a window-sash in place 
and all but one door gone. The foliage 
of the bay overgrew the windows, and 
poison oak and other bushes had begun 
to sprout through the broken planks of 
the floor. The first room had been the 
assayer's office. The second room, en- 
tered from a different side and on a 
different level and by a plank propped 
against the threshold, had been the bed- 
room of the miners. A triple tier of beds 
lined two opposite sides. The third room 
was higher up the hill and farther up the 
[91] 



ROBERTLOUIS STEVENSON 

canon. It contained only rubbish and 
the uprights for another triple tier of 
beds. The whole building was overhung 
by a great projecting rock, and over- 
grown with tall bushes. 

There seemed no other choice and who 
of a romantic and gypsy turn of mind 
would ask for anything else.'^ The de- 
serted mine and miners' cabin was chosen. 

That night the Stevensons stopped at 
the Toll House and next day were picked 
up by the Kelmars on their homeward 
way from their extended trip into Lake 
County. They returned to Calistoga to 
prepare for the flitting. 

A few days later all things were ready 
for the squatting at Silverado. Steven- 
son could always make of his surround- 
ings a story, could always see himself in 
a romantic situation. It was thus that 
he got through with spirit more than one 
weary stage, saved himself the tedium 
of more than one dreary hour. This 
time the play was that of the ''king and 
queen." They rode in a double buggy 
[92] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

toward the new possessions, and the 
"crown prince" — Mrs. Stevenson's 
twelve-year-old son — was on horseback 
like an outrider. The baggage was left 
for the Hanson team which was to fol- 
low. Half-way up the hill, beside the 
road, they came to a silent and ruined 
mill where once the ore from the mine 
had been carted, and, carrying out the 
play, they held it as being a part of the 
Silverado mining property, to be an out- 
lying province of their own. 

It was late afternoon when the royal 
squatters took possession of their newly 
acquired dominion. There was a great 
deal to be done before even it was a fit 
camping place for a night. Rubbish had 
to be cleared from the rooms and hay 
brought for beds. Stevenson with pick 
and shovel deepened the pool behind the 
shaft to collect sufficient water from a 
spring that trickled there, for their do- 
mestic uses. A fire was lit in the black- 
smith's forge across from the other larger 
house. The afternoon thus wore away 
[93] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

to evening and the baggage had not 
arrived, — the royal family were sup- 
perless. 

It was between seven and eight when 
the Hanson wagon with boxes, bags, and 
cold provender arrived, and much later 
before the baggage could all be got up 
the crazy ladders and the breakneck 
spout of rolling mineral, and landed in 
the house. In time the assayer's office 
was thronged with their belongings, 
piled higgledy-piggledy and upside down, 
about the floor. Then it was discovered 
that Mrs. Stevenson had left the keys in 
Calistoga, where the chimney of the 
stove had likewise been forgotten. A 
stove plate had been lost somewhere on 
the road. The important thing, how- 
ever, was at hand, food. The squat- 
ters ate that night in the disorder of 
the assayer's office, perched among the 
boxes. Hay brought from the Toll 
House filled two of the lowest bunks in 
the tier of beds. A single candle, stuck 
in the mouth of a bottle, gave them light. 
[94] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

It was a dismal beginning, and only a 
determination to make the best of things 
saved a retreat on the first night of occu- 
pation and the hope of the bright day of 
sunshine a few hours ahead. 

Next morning was full of business, 
clearing up floors, patching up doors and 
windows, substituting white cotton cloth 
for panes, making beds and seats and 
getting the rough lodging into livable 
shape. There was wood to be cut and 
a young man, Mrs. Hanson's brother, 
was engaged for the job. He proved 
himself so lazy and worthless that he 
was more of a nuisance than a help. He 
was beautiful as a statue, but "had the 
soul of a fat sheep." It was a cruel 
thought that persons (and he meant 
himself) less favored in their birth than 
this creature, "endowed — to use the 
language of theatres — with extraordi- 
nary 'means,' should so manage to mis- 
employ them," said Stevenson. 

One morning there was an occurrence 
that proved the wisdom of the choice of 
[95] 



KOBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

Silverado as a sanitarium for Stevenson. 
A sea fog rolled in, filling the valley 
and blotting out every feature of the 
country and rising almost to the mine, 
even so far as the Toll House, and only 
a projection of the mountain saved their 
own little canon. It was to flee these 
fogs, disastrous to his lungs, that Steven- 
son had left the seaboard and climbed 
so high among the mountains. The de- 
scription of this morning of fog in Napa 
Valley, seen from above from the mine 
in "Silverado Squatters," is one of the 
finest descriptions in all Stevenson's 
writings. 

The Toll House beside the road, a little 
over the summit of the ridge, played a 
great part in the life of the Stevensons 
that summer. There was little traffic 
on the Toll road, but at fixed hours 
there arrived the stages daily crossing 
and returning from Calistoga to Lake 
County. Their coming threw the quiet, 
sleepy tavern into a moment of life and 
bustle. A Httle before stage time the 
[96] 



m 



^ 



■^^H| 





SEA FOG FILLING NAPA VALLE\ 




* 




SEA FOG FILLING NAPA VALLEl 



IN CALIFORNIA 



squatters left their aerie, climbed down 
the rickety ladders, and descended by 
the rough path through the undergrowth 
out upon the highway and to the Toll 
House. The first of the two stages 
swooped upon the Toll House with a roar 
and a cloud of dust. Hardly would the 
horses be reined in before the second 
was abreast of it. There was generally 
a full load of passengers, men in shirt 
sleeves, women swathed in veils and all 
covered with the dust of the road. "The 
heart-felt bustle of that hour is hardly 
credible," wrote Stevenson; "the childish 
hope and interest with which one gazed 
in all these strangers' eyes. They paused 
there but to pass: the blue-clad China- 
boy, the San Francisco magnate, the 
mystery in the dust-coat, the secret 
memoirs in tweed, the ogling, well-shod 
lady with her troop of girls; they did 
but flash and go; they were hull down 
for us behind life's ocean, and we but 
hailed their top-sails on the line. Yet, 
out of our great solitude of four and 
[97] 



/ 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

twenty hours, we thrilled to their momen- 
tary presence; gauged and divined them, 
loved and hated; and stood hght-headed 
in that storm of human electricity." 
In the stage came also the post-bag with 
its letters to prolong the pleasure of 
communication with man, even when the 
huge and heavy stages had gone on their 
opposite ways. 

In the resumed silence on the veranda 
of the Toll House, with the green dell 
below, the spires of pines, the sun- 
warm, scented air, the letters and the 
daily papers, bringing news of the tur- 
bulent world below, occupied a part of 
the afternoon ere the squatters returned 
to their lone position at the mouth of the 
tunnels to the mines. 

There came an interruption in life 
at Silverado. Mrs. Stevenson and her 
young son fell ill. The three squatters 
had to hurry back to Calistoga and a 
cottage on the green. It is no small 
amount of labor that it costs to support 
life even amid the simple surroundings 
[98] 




FRENCH RESIDENCE OF STEVENSON 

Whence He Despatched His Letter to S i m o n e a u and 
Finished '^ S i I v e r a d o Squatters^' 



IN CALIFORNIA 

of a mountain canon. It was desired to 
find a China-boy to take back with them 
on their return. This wish could not be 
reahzed for no China-boy could be found 
that was willing to go. 

But the Stevensons were not, how- 
ever, to return alone. Joe Strong, Mrs. 
Stevenson's son-in-law, joined them at 
Calistoga and returned "home" with 
them. The journey up the mountain 
side this time was made in the dark. 
There was a display of stars for a short 
time before the moon rose that night, 
such as Stevenson had never before 
seen. "The difference between a calm 
and a hurricane is not greatly more 
striking than that between the ordinary 
face of night and the splendor that shone 
upon us in that drive. Two in our 
wagon knew night as she shines upon 
the tropics, but even that bore no com- 
parison. The nameless color of the sky, 
the hues of the star-fire, and the incred- 
ible projection of the stars themselves, 
starting from their orbits, so that the 
[99] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

eye seemed to distinguish their positions 
in the hollow of space — these were 
things that we had never seen before and 
shall never see again. The sunlight 
flooded the pale islet of the moon, and 
her lit face put out, one after another, 
that galaxy of stars. The wonder of 
the drive was over; but, by some nice 
conjunction of clearness in the air and 
fir shadow in the valley where we trav- 
elled, we had seen for a little while that 
brave display of the midnight heavens. 
It was gone, but it had been; nor shall 
I ever again behold the stars with the 
same mind." 

Only in a climate like that of Califor- 
nia was such a life as that of the squat- 
ters possible. The house was everywhere 
so wrecked and shattered, the air came 
and went so freely, the sun found so 
many port-holes, the light came through 
so many chinks, that life under its roof 
was much the same as alfresco. A sin- 
gle shower of rain would have made 
the place uninhabitable. Moreover, the 
[100] 



I 






$ 



IN CALIFORNIA 

cabin answered only for bedroom and 
kitchen. On the earth platform in front, 
or in the shade of the madronas in the 
little corner near the forge, were passed 
all the hours of daylight. 

In the first hours of the morning Ste- 
venson, as was his wont, always did his 
writing. For the rest of the day, it was 
spent lying down or wandering on the 
platform, carrying a few pails of water 
from the shaft, meeting the stage at the 
Toll House, and a long evening, again 
under the stars on the platform. 

It was a good life for Stevenson 
and brought him rest, contentment, and 
health. It could not have endured. Such 
a life is only for a season for human 
beings, and for Stevenson, with all his 
love for change and new experiences and 
problems, it could not have gone on long. 
But before he had begun to weary, 
before his restless spirit began to assert 
itself, there came a letter from Edin- 
burgh from his father and mother beg- 
ging for his return home. They wearied 
[101] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

to see their son and there was a welcome 
extended to his new wife and his step- 
son. 

Yielding to their desires, late in July, 
Silverado was deserted. The Stevensons 
returned to San Francisco only to pre- 
pare for the journey to Scotland. So 
just about a year from the time Stevenson 
first set foot in California he bade good- 
bye to those Western shores. On the 
seventh day of August, 1880, he took 
passage from New York bound for his 
Scottish home; and California knew him 
no more for a while. 

Silverado, however, had not fully estab- 
lished his health. It was too wracked 
for any complete cure. The whole his- 
tory of the succeeding years was one 
weary search from place to place, coun- 
try to country, for a climate and con- 
ditions where he could have even a 
small measure of health. Again and 
again hemorrhages from the lungs 
brought him to the point of death, and 
weeks and months at a time he was 
[ 102 ] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

scarcely out of his bedroom. '*I think 
I was made, what there is of me, of whip- 
cord and thorn switches. Surely I am 
tough," was his comment on coming 
through so many terrible illnesses. 

He kept on at his work when he was 
at all able; but that was his pleasure 
and the only thing that made his life 
tolerable through languor and pain; and 
expression is always the artist's neces- 
sity and supremest joy. 

"An art is a fine fortune, a palace in a 
park, a band of music, health, and physi- 
cal beauty ; all but love — to any worthy 
practiser. I sleep upon my art for a 
pillow; I waken in my art; I am un- 
ready for death because I hate to leave 
it. I love my wife, I do not know how 
much, nor can, nor shall, unless I lost 
her; but while I can conceive my being 
widowed, I refuse the offering of life 
without my art. I am not but in my 
art; it is me. I am the body of it 
merely." 

Far away and through changing scenes 
[103] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

he never forgot his California experiences 
nor his California friends. To the num- 
ber was added in Samoa Thomas Wilkin- 
son of Oakland, whom he met in Apia. 
During his stay in the islands Mr. Wil- 
kinson was much at Vailima. When he 
returned home to Oakland, Stevenson, 
acknowledging for Mrs. Stevenson a gift 
of roses Mr. Wilkinson had sent her, said : 
*' Present our respects to Mrs. and Miss 
Wilkinson. Tell them they ought to be 
nice people, — they are certainly for- 
tunate in a husband and a father; and 
add that if you lost fifty-six pounds 
weight, you left it all behind here in the 
shape of good will." 

"The Wrecker" was not the only book 
written in the South Sea which referred 
to California. There are verses and 
there is also the ''Bottle Imp." Keawe 
received the bottle from an elderly man, 
living in one of the great houses on Nob 
Hill in San Francisco. 

In 1877, the death of his father, 
Thomas Stevenson, the distinguished en- 
[104] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

gineer, cut the bond that held Robert 
Louis Stevenson to Europe. His mother 
was ready to go with him anywhere that 
would give him health and happiness. 
So with her and his wife and step-son, 
Lloyd Osbourne, he sailed again for 
America. 

He stopped the winter in the Adiron- 
dack Mountains, which greatly strength- 
ened him for the time being; but a yacht 
and the glory of the sea and in particular 
the beautiful blue Pacific, which he had 
learned to love in Monterey, were loudly 
calling him. And so in June, 1888, he 
found himself in San Francisco once 
more. 

On the first morning after his arrival, 
with his mother to accompany him, — 
for she wished to go to thank Mrs. 
Carson herself for all she had been to 
her boy that long sad winter he spent in 
her house, — he found himself again in 
Bush Street, passed in front of Donadieu's 
restaurant, and, climbing the hill, arrived 
at the old number, 608. But the house 
[105] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

in which Stevenson had Hved was gone 
and a new one had taken its place, and 
Mrs. Carson, too, was gone. 

The Stevensons were staying at the 
old Occidental Hotel on Montgomery 
Street. Stevenson got into communica- 
tion with Mrs. Carson and sent for her 
to come to the hotel, as has already been 
related. His strength had been terribly 
exhausted by the trip across the conti- 
nent. It was by sheer force of will alone 
that he had kept his little spark of life 
from going out entirely. 

But he greatly longed for this voyage 
he had so often dreamed of since his first 
visit to Stoddard's rooms on Telegraph 
Hill, and even before that. When he 
was a boy of seventeen, Mr. Seed, of 
New Zealand, told him of Samoa: "Beau- 
tiful places, green forever; beautiful 
people, with red flowers in their hair and 
nothing to do but study oratory and eti- 
quette." To these accounts he had sat 
up all night to listen, and was sick with 
desire to go there; so it was by deter- 
[106] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

mination alone that he Hved to reach 
San Francisco, and through the days of 
preparation in fitting out a yacht for the 
intended cruise. His friends had all to 
seek him at the Occidental Hotel, where 
he was scarcely an hour out of bed. 

Mrs. Williams, always ready to be of 
assistance to him, remembers accom- 
panying him to the bank, to arrange 
about his money and drafts and remit- 
tances while he should be away in the 
yacht. 

How Stevenson chartered the schooner 
yacht Casco, seventy tons. Captain Otis, 
owned by Dr. Merritt, of Oakland, is all 
known to history. Several weeks, part 
of which time Stevenson berthed aboard 
when the yacht lay in the Oakland 
estuary, were spent in fitting her out for 
a six months' cruise to the Marquesas, 
Tahiti, and the Paumotos, and how 
Stevenson never came back, but found 
health and happiness and seven years of 
added life among the South Sea Islands, 
is also known. 

[ 107 ] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

His stay turned into exile, for he found 
that only in the South Seas could he Hve; 
and sad days and longing for famiUar 
friends and faces succeeded, especially 
in the last years of his life; but he never 
again even ventured so far as San Fran- 
cisco. '*The mere extent of a man's 
travel has in it something consolatory. 
That he should have left friends and 
enemies in many different and distant 
quarters gives a sort of earthly dignity 
to his existence; and I think the better 
of myself for the belief that I have left 
some in California interested in me and 
my success." 

Letters to Mrs. Williams arrived from 
Samoa; and in that island where he 
made his home he found one last little 
connection with California in the friend- 
ship of Mr. Wilkinson, of Oakland, who 
went to Apia, Samoa, to try its effect 
on his failing health. Mr. Wilkinson had 
many pleasant conferences with Steven- 
son when he rode down from his moun- 
tain home, Vailima, to the beach, and 
[108] 




Stevenson's monument, Portsmouth square 
san francisco 



IN CALIFORNIA 

when Mr. Wilkinson visited Vailima. 
At the time, Mrs. Stevenson was much 
engaged in making and planting some 
flower beds; and on his return to Oak- 
land Mr. Wilkinson sent Mrs. Stevenson 
some roses for her garden. 

We have spoken of "The Wrecker" and 
the description of the entrance into Cali- 
fornia. Other parts of this book are full 
of characters and places in San Fran- 
cisco. "The Speedy," while not them 
in entirety, was suggested by the Car- 
sons and their propensity to gamble in 
mining stocks, no matter how wild-cat. 
To San Francisco again his mind re- 
verted in the story of "The Bottle 
Imp," written in Samoa for Samoans, 
and the bottle was first found in the 
possession of one living on Nob Hill. 

With a mind quickened and tuned with 
his Western experiences, his memory 
stored with its incidents, bound with ties 
of friendship, in a peculiar sense Robert 
Louis Stevenson was a Calif ornian. The 
great State may wear him as one of the 
[109] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

brightest jewels, and pay honor and 
homage to his memory as, if adopted, 
the most loving and gifted and brave 
of her sons. 

THE LITTLE BRONZE SHIP 

By W. O. McGeeham 

Read at the Stevenson Fellowship Banquet at San Francisco 
on Stevenson's birthday, Nov. 13, 1909. 

When the night comes, the little bronze 
ship on the Stevenson Monument, Ports- 
mouth Square, San Francisco, seems to grow 
restless in the moonlight. Sometimes it is 
said the little vessel puts out on a cruise to 
the southwest manned by a phantom crew. 



110] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

LEGEND OF PORTSMOUTH SQUARE 

Oh, the little bronze ship at the anchor chain 
tugs 

And the light on the bright sails gleams. 

In the moonshine and mist it is headed south- 
west 

For a cruise on the sea of dreams. 

All deserted the anchorage place in the square. 

There are none who may look at it now; 

With a brave off-shore wind that is warning 
behind 

It is churning the foam with its prow. 

With a queer phantom crew it is off on the 

blue. 
And the blocks in the rigging ring. 
When the wraith voices rise to the tropical 

skies 
And this is the song that they sing: 
^'Fifteen men on a dead man's chest, 
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! 
Drink and the devil had done with the rest, 
Yo'ho'ho and a bottle of rumT' 

There is Morgan, and Merry, and savage 

Long John 
With his crutch, on the little bronze ship. 
And old Smollett, the Skipper, is shaking his 

head, 

[111] 



ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON 

As he thinks of that other trip; 
And the oracle parrot, the sage Captain Flinty 
Still is chatfring of bloodshed and wreck. 
With his big dreamy eyes staring up at the skies. 
See, the master is pacing the deck. 

There are doubloons and loot, there is battle 

to boot. 
Ere they ever return to their port; 
With a rhythmical swing now the crew's voices 

ring 
In a song of a gruesome sort: 
** Fifteen men on a dead mans chest, 
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! 
Drink and the devil had done with the rest, 
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rumT* 

Oh, the little bronze ship has returned to its place 

To the stone by the poplar trees. 

And the little bronze sails though they gleam 
in the sun 

Will not answer the morning breeze. 

Now the ghost song has died on the pale phan- 
tom lips. 

And gone are the mast and the men. 

And the little bronze ship is back safe from the 
trip 

Till it goes on a cruise again. 

There it lies through the day, till the noise 
dies away 

[112] 



IN CALIFORNIA 

And the moonshine is soft on the square: 
Then its queer phantom crew take it out on 

the blue 
And their chanty rings weird on the air: 
'^Fifteen men on a dead man^s chest, 
Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum! 
Drink and the devil had done with the rest, 
Yo-ho'ho and a bottle of rum,^ 



THE END 



JAN 22 1912 



One copy del. to Cat. Div. 



m 22 1912 



